We should give free money to the homeless

[ModusPwnd]

The point is relative poverty is not so impoverished when you adopt a broad (global) perspective. The people in "poverty" in the US and the EU often consume more resources than the Earth can even support, per capita.

 

[russ_watters]

There are references given for both numbers. If you want to be skeptical of the original sources, that's a different issue from just dismissing it as a "student essay".

mheslep has a good sense of smell. The number is accurate but for the wrong thing.

If you google then google again, you can find this:
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html
It still isn't the original source of the number, but says this:

Another approximation is from a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty which states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007).

So 3.5M isn't the "homeless population" right now, it is the number that have at least one night of homelessness in a given year. If you want to know the homeless population on any given night, that number is a little further down:

These numbers, based on findings from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Urban Institute and specifically the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers, draw their estimates from a study of service providers across the country at two different times of the year in 1996. They found that, on a given night in October, 444,000 people (in 346,000 households) experienced homelessness – which translates to 6.3% of the population of people living in poverty. On a given night in February, 842,000 (in 637,000 households) experienced homelessness...

So the number we're really looking for (albeit 10 years old) is about 650,000 at anyone time. Now this poverty advocacy site prefers the 3.5M number:

Many people call or write the National Coalition for the Homeless to ask about the number of homeless people in the United States. There is no easy answer to this question and, in fact, the question itself is misleading. In most cases, homelessness is a temporary circumstance -- not a permanent condition. A more appropriate measure of the magnitude of homelessness is the number of people who experience homelessness over time, not the number of "homeless people."

Whether that is more appropriate or not I leave to you, but clearly when playing whisper-down-the-lane, the number gets misinterpreted. That is a good reason why you shouldn't cite a student essay.

Disappointingly, PBS contributed to the mess, because their quote was this:

One approximation of the annual number of homeless in America is from a study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which estimates between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness.

By not providing the timeframe, our poor student was forced to guess...

 

[russ_watters]

I really don't get your point. Based on some absolute definition like e.g. earning less than 1 Dollar a day, poor people in the EU would not only be poor but starving...

I think you're serious there, but no developed nation uses a $1 a day threshold for poverty so you are badly misunderstanding the issue. The US poverty threshold varies by family size, but for an individual is $11,500 per year in income ($31.50 per day).
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/13poverty.cfm

What an absolute poverty threshold does is tell you if a person is actually in need, which is what the word "poverty" means and a "poverty rate" or threshold should therefore tell you. The European way of measuring it only tells you where you are relative to your countrymen: it doesn't tell you if you are in need.

Worse, the way market economies work in reality causes the poverty rate using that measure to move in the wrong direction relative to the health of an economy: poverty rates go up when the economy is good and down when the economy is bad. The OECD is aware of this flaw and has started using the absolute scale (albeit at an arbitrary threshold) when that problem becomes most obvious:

Measures of relative poverty refer to the current
median income and are therefore difficult to interpret
during recessions. In a situation where the incomes of
all households fall but they fall by less at the bottom
than at the middle, relative poverty will decline.
Therefore, different more “absolute” poverty indices,
linked to past living standards, are needed to
complement the picture provided by relative income
poverty.

To address this issue, Figure 7 describes changes in
poverty using an indicator which measures poverty
against a benchmark “anchored” to half the median
real incomes observed in 2005. Using this measure,
recent increases in income poverty are much higher
than suggested by “relative” income poverty.

http://www.oecd.org/social/soc/OECD2013-Inequality-and-Poverty-8p.pdf

They haven't gotten rid of their ridiculous way of measuring poverty yet, but they are making the mess worse by adding a second measure that contradicts the first. Making the mess worse highlights the problem so eventually I think this will work itself out.

...as prices are somehow proportional to the median income...

For a comparison between rich and poor countries that is true, but when tracking the income, poverty and prices of a particular rich country it is not. I checked a handful of OECD countries and only the US experienced any price reduction (and then only a pinch) during the recession:
http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=221#

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Relative poverty is a very important measure. There have been a wealth of studies showing that relative poverty causes health problems, even amongst people of the same socioeconomic class working in the same places doing similar jobs. It's not just imagined out of thin air due to some European liberal ideology.

It doesn't take much searching on pubmed or a similar site to find epidemiological studies into this, for example:
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/1/78.full.pdf

Just because absolute poverty has been almost eradicated in the western world doesn't mean we can sit back and declare everything is fine. The fact remains that the poorer classes in society face significant bigger health problems (amongst others but health is the area I have encountered most research on) than those above. Unless you believe that whether or not one is poor or rich is purely down to personal choice I can't see why anyone would be opposed to policies aimed at measuring and addressing this.

 

[Pythagorean]

Richard Wilkinson is well known for his research comparing relative to absolute.

That mortality in developed countries is affected more
by relative than absolute living standards is shown by
three pieces of evidence. Firstly, mortality is related
more closely to relative income within countries than
to differences in absolute income between them.
Secondly, national mortality rates tend to be lowest in
countries that have smaller income differences and
thus have lower levels of relative deprivation. Thirdly,
most of the long term rise in life expectancy seems
unrelated to long term economic growth rates.
Although both material and social influences
contribute to inequalities in health, the importance of
relative standards implies that psychosocial pathways
may be particularly influential.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126067/pdf/9055723.pdf

 

[russ_watters]

Relative poverty is a very important measure. There have been a wealth of studies showing that relative poverty causes health problems, even amongst people of the same socioeconomic class working in the same places doing similar jobs. It's not just imagined out of thin air due to some European liberal ideology.

I disagree with basically all of that - even the part about it being "European" - it is just liberal; it most certainly applies to American liberals.

"Important" is strictly a matter of opinion: clearly this matters to liberals. But that does not mean that there are real-world effects (or, rather, that they are correct about what those real-world effects are). I've never seen convincing evidence that there are real-world effects...so let's have a look:

It doesn't take much searching on pubmed or a similar site to find epidemiological studies into this, for example:
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/1/78.full.pdf

It is widely acknowledged that individual income is a
powerful determinant of individual health. It is also
acknowledged that the relation between individual income
and health status is concave, such that each additional dollar
of income raises individual health by a decreasing amount.

Agreed. But that isn't what you claimed. You claimed that inequality itself causes health problems, not that lower income causes health problems. The difference - again - is that in a poor economy, incomes go down and inequality also goes down. By your measure, a recession should improve the health of a nation whereas the paper you cite means that a recession would worsen the health of a nation.

Indeed, the paper even is careful to say "income poverty" (absolute poverty) in its discussion: it never cites relative poverty at all. Inequality and relative poverty are not the same thing: this paper is not discussing your point, it is discussing inequality. Inequality and relative poverty are not the same thing. Inequality has its own measure: gini coefficient. But I'll still bite:

The reason for this disconnect between what appears to be the popular liberal view and what the paper says is obvious and has been discussed before: the liberal ideology holds that there is a fixed-pie and that if someone is taking a bigger piece (fractionally), another person must take a smaller piece (by volume). But this is simply factually wrong: the pie is not fixed in size: it grows (and occasionally shrinks), so in reality, the volume of your piece over time can still grow as the fraction you get goes down. And this is in fact exactly what happens over the long-term:

1. Incomes in all sectors rise.
2. Inequality rises.
3. Health in all sectors improves.

Now the paper does go into the issue of inequality itself:

First, in a comparison of tables 1 and 2, it is evident that
the bulk of studies that suggest an association between
income inequality and poor health have been conducted so
far within the United States (16–25). However, even within
the United States, several studies have not corroborated this
association (26–30).

Second, studies conducted outside the United States have
generally failed to find an association between income
inequality and health (31–35).

Again, the reason for the discrepancy should be obvious: European countries don't have an association between inequality and health because Europeans countries all have nationalized healthcare and Americans don't! So Americans' health is more impacted by income than Europeans.

I believe that the results of the studies into the impact of inequality itself in the US are mixed because it is very difficult to separate the different effects. But if the hypothesis that inequality itself impacted health were correct, it should show up in European studies because the European studies remove the most obvious confounding variable: the quality of the healthcare.

The study appears to be aware of the issue and tries to explain it away:

. The absence of an association between income distribution and health in the countries listed on table 2 may therefore reflect a threshold effect of inequality on poor health.
When we turn to countries that are relatively more unequal than the United States (e.g., Chile (table 2)), we find some support for the relation (37).

So the general hypothesis that inequality impacts health failed. The alternative hypothesis is that inequality only impacts health when it is above a certain threshold. I think the lack of comment on the lack of national healthcare is a glaring omission (caveat: I haven't finished reading), but either way, the association cannot be as strong as people like to think.

This is an interesting study in that it is a meta-study listing the results of many individual studies. You said "There have been a wealth of studies showing that relative poverty causes health problems..." That's literally true, but I don't think that's what you meant because as they show, the opposite is also true: there have been a wealth of studies showing that relative poverty does not cause health problems. I think you mean to say that the studies tend to agree and show conclusively that there is an impact. They do not:

Using the existing evidence, can we conclude that income
inequality is a public health hazard? The answer to that question is far from settled...

Just because absolute poverty has been almost eradicated in the western world doesn't mean we can sit back and declare everything is fine...

Unless you believe that whether or not one is poor or rich is purely down to personal choice I can't see why anyone would be opposed to policies aimed at measuring and addressing this.

That's a strawman. I've never said that everything was fine or that we shouldn't work to fix issues with poverty - here or anywhere else. What I say is that accurate understanding of problems and useful discussion of them requires useful and honest statistics and in my opinion, relative poverty is not a useful and honest statistic. To be clear, I think the OECD's adding of a chained threshold is an acknowledgment that the stat has failed to show what it is designed to show. But I also think - and this part is opinion - that the statistic was created for political purposes in the first place.

The fact remains that the poorer classes in society face significant bigger health problems (amongst others but health is the area I have encountered most research on) than those above.

Again, that point is not being debated - I don't know if I'm misunderstanding you or you are misunderstanding me, but it is obvious that in a country where you buy your own healthcare, having more money means having better healthcare. But that isn't what you said before: you said inequality causes health problems. That's a very much different claim. You seem to be reading a lot of things from my posts that I haven't said.

 

[russ_watters]

Richard Wilkinson is well known for his research comparing relative to absolute.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126067/pdf/9055723.pdf

Indeed he is well known and if I remember correctly, due to significant problems with his work he was banned as a source here. This illustrates one of the significant difficulties in discussing this issue: it is often the advocates who are doing the research.

 

[mheslep]

So the number we're really looking for (albeit 10 years old) is about 650,000 at anyone time.

Or about 0.2% of US the population. My state with about the same population as Denmark has http://usich.gov/usich_resources/maps/overall_homelessness_ratesof the population counted as homeless at any given time, the same figure given in the essay for Denmark.

Also note from that NCH reference that homeless does necessarily mean on the streets. The definition is "lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence ..." which includes not only temporary shelters but also those that are "sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, ..." a definition that included me for some months long ago, though I never would have counted myself 'homeless'.

I have little idea how the above definition compares to Denmark's methodology, other than to guess that there are significant differences.

 

[russ_watters]

Also note from that NCH reference that homeless does necessarily mean on the streets. The definition is "lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence ..." which includes not only temporary shelters but also those that are "sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, ..." a definition that included me for some months long ago, though I never would have counted myself 'homeless'.

I didn't realize that - a buddy of mine had a poorly coordinated apartment transition a few months ago that left him begging for couch space and keeping his stuff in a friend's garage for two weeks. So he would have been counted as "homeless" as well.

 

[Pythagorean]

a definition that included me for some months long ago

The legal definition in the states is more robust then this though. That's only of 1 of 6 requirements (I'm pretty sure this is an AND list, as evidenced by the "and" at the end of 5C). I've bolded the parts that I think would separate "transient homelessness" from true homelessness:

For purposes of this chapter, the terms “homeless”, “homeless individual”, and “homeless person” means— [1]
(1) an individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence;
(2) an individual or family with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport, or camping ground;
(3) an individual or family living in a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including hotels and motels paid for by Federal, State, or local government programs for low-income individuals or by charitable organizations, congregate shelters, and transitional housing);
(4) an individual who resided in a shelter or place not meant for human habitation and who is exiting an institution where he or she temporarily resided;

(5) an individual or family who—
(A) will imminently lose their housing, including housing they own, rent, or live in without paying rent, are sharing with others, and rooms in hotels or motels not paid for by Federal, State, or local government programs for low-income individuals or by charitable organizations, as evidenced by—
(i) a court order resulting from an eviction action that notifies the individual or family that they must leave within 14 days;
(ii) the individual or family having a primary nighttime residence that is a room in a hotel or motel and where they lack the resources necessary to reside there for more than 14 days; or
(iii) credible evidence indicating that the owner or renter of the housing will not allow the individual or family to stay for more than 14 days, and any oral statement from an individual or family seeking homeless assistance that is found to be credible shall be considered credible evidence for purposes of this clause;
(B) has no subsequent residence identified; and
(C) lacks the resources or support networks needed to obtain other permanent housing; and

(6) unaccompanied youth and homeless families with children and youth defined as homeless under other Federal statutes who—
(A) have experienced a long term period without living independently in permanent housing,
(B) have experienced persistent instability as measured by frequent moves over such period, and
(C) can be expected to continue in such status for an extended period of time because of chronic disabilities, chronic physical health or mental health conditions, substance addiction, histories of domestic violence or childhood abuse, the presence of a child or youth with a disability, or multiple barriers to employment.

notice also that the 5A's are all OR statements with respect to each other : i or ii or iii. But most of the other clauses are AND's.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302I think if mehslep or Russel's friends actually conformed to the definition 5 above (which has some certainty about no future independent housing being available) then they would be dependent on their host and it would be fair to call them homeless.

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm not sure now, what the AND's mean. Typically, in law, AND means you're supposed to fulfill all listed requirements (you must be 1 AND 2). But here it seems like it's being used differently, because requiring everyone be a 4) or a 6) would severely limit the definition of homelessness.

I guess that with definition, AND is inclusive though, rather than exclusive. So you only need be anyone of these. Or, perhaps, different institutions draw on different of the six definitions depending on their purpose.

I believe it is the latter, as the McKinney Vento act is only intended for children, so only a 6) would be legible for McKinney Vento hand-outs (i.e. only children).

 

[gfd43tg]

I live in an area where there is a large homeless population. Everyday after I have breakfast or lunch, I make a sandwich or bagel and give it to a homeless person. They are always so happy to see someone give them something.

 

[pagetheoracle]

I personally think it is a good idea if the recipient is grateful (see altruism thread too) but not if they feel they are owed it as a right. In other words attitude is what makes the difference and speaking as a UK resident, the welfare state should make this distinction between humility and arrogance but doesn't (The arrogant are usually greedy for resources and grab everything going, whereas the humble slide into the background and are ignored because they do not protest too much (quote from Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'). I will be posting further points here probably about introversion and extroversion as expounded by Jung and now making a return, thanks to Susan Cain's book 'Quiet,' as I think it is very relevant to where society is going and how it should / will affect us all.

 

[marcus]

...because they do not protest too much (quote from Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar')...

Doesn't ring a bell with me, can you give me the exact line in Julius Caesar?

I remember the line in Act V of HAMLET that Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother,speaks:
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

But there's that great speech by Cassius in J.C. about ambition and power grabbing versus humbleness--it is not about protesting much or little, explicitly, but has some parallels with what you were talking about:

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could find me the actual quote you had in mind.

 

[pagetheoracle]

Gad you're right! I thought it was the scene where Julius gets assassinated or was an aside by him about Cassius. Sorry!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Here is a recent TEDTalk on Free Basic Income

 

[russ_watters]

I have to say, it was really hard to watch a video who's thesis is a flat self-contradiction (free money), but I got through it. It is mostly a rehash of what we've already discussed, with the same flaws and vagaries. But in particular, I find it pretty disingenuous for him to first advocate giving this "free money" to everyone and then citing a study that says it would cost $175 Billion. That $175 billion was not from giving it to everyone, it was only for adding enough to raise the poor to the poverty line. Giving it to everyone would cost several trillion dollars. So he mismatched his cost and benefit (in his favor) by something like a factor of 15!

[edit] And the self-contradiction can't be ignored and is just made worse by suggesting it should be given to everyone. Self-contradictory platitutes can sometimes be ignored because we can assume the person didn't really mean it or the self-contradition is to illustrate some other point. But "free money for everyone" is a very specific self-contradiction that really requires explanation. Money given to someone has to be given by someone. It simply can't be given to everyone: so who gives, who gets and how much?

 

[nsaspook]

I for one welcome our 'Free Basic Income' overlords but I would like a little more than basic income please, Master.

 

[Another God]

I for one welcome our 'Free Basic Income' overlords but I would like a little more than basic income please, Master.

Then get a high paying job. That's the beauty of the BI, it adds up with your income.

A new article on this subject: http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-robot-1653303459

 

[russ_watters]

Then get a high paying job. That's the beauty of the BI, it adds up with your income.

For some people, perhaps. But again, since someone has to pay for it, it subtracts from those people. For someone with "a high paying job", implementing a BI would substantially reduce their net (after tax) income. After implementation, acquiring "a high paying job" when you currently have none will be worth substantially less than without the BI, as you go from being a payee to a payer.

It really bothers me that the articles about it barely scratch the surface of what it means/how it would work. It really smells like a scam to me - a joke, like a facebook hoax. So:

A new article on this subject:

This particular article -- it isn't a news source I've ever heard of. Who is the author? What is the basis for his claims -- such as the title and thesis:

How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising...

Given the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and the frightening prospect of technological unemployment, it will be required to prevent complete social and economic collapse. It's not a question of if, but how soon.

Uh, what? Is this guy too big of a Terminator fan? Where did he get this? A lot is apparently bloggers quoting bloggers, which imo leads to a self-reinforcing crackpot counter-culture (like climate change deniers or 9/11 truthers):

Another interesting fact about the United States is that a surprisingly large portion of working age adults are not working, primarily because there are too few jobs to go around. This may not be obvious, because the declared unemployment rate in the United States seems low, at consistently less than 10% over a long period of time. The problem is that the official unemployment rate hides the huge number of working-age Americans who are no longer considered a part of the workforce. Currently, only 63% of working-age adults are actually working.

That's a quote of a quote originating from Marshall Brain, founder of Ask.com. Frankly, such bad analysis from a successful entrepreneur is unforgivable. He even linked the actual stats to show how wrong he is! The combined forces of womens' lib and the coming of age of the Baby Boomers in the 1960s caused forty years of increasing workforce participation -- though the increase was not actually that big: from about 58% to 67%. Since the recession and with the retirement of the Baby Boomers and with increasing life expectancies, it has started falling again.

Now, part of what he said is forgivable error: the stat that 63% of working-age Americans are actually working. That isn't what the stat he linked measures. Labor force participation rate is both the people who are working and the people who are trying to find but are unable to find jobs. So the fraction who are working is actually lower.

But to take a single data point and call it a trend is an unforgivable error. It is difficult to see it as anything other than an intentional deception. He has the statistics in front of him that tell him that up until about 2002 the fraction of Americans with jobs was rising and even with the drops since it still only dropped back to the 50 year average. It sounds a lot less scary to say that since 2002, the fraction of working age Americans with jobs has dropped from 64% to 59%.

In either case, while you may say that that 5% drop is partially due to "too few jobs to go around", it is certainly very wrong to say that the total of 41% who don't have jobs is all due to "too few jobs to go around". The vast majority are either students, stay at home parents or retired.

 

[Another God]

You've never seen io9 before? Well, it is obviously a journalistic endeavour, not original research, but that isn't a problem, it isn't like the author hasn't linked to numerous pieces of evidence to back up everything he says.

But again, since someone has to pay for it, it subtracts from those people.

But that is how functional societies work. The people who have more than they need are taxed and that tax is spent to ensure every has basics provided to them. The current system already does that, and has done so for hundreds of years. This proposal is no different in that regard at all. The only change here is that this system is claiming to be more efficient, more effective and more equal.

But again, since someone has to pay for it, it subtracts from those people.

That is pure conjecture. The reality of the situation very much depends on how the BI is funded, and many suggestions don't involve changing income tax at all. Also, what most people would consider 'High Income' is not really the target, but rather the people with excessively large incomes, and more importantly, corporations with excessively large profits.

I would guess 99% of the population would be net better off with a BI, and 0.9% would be essentially unaffected at all, and 0.1% would feel something - but don't worry about that 0.1%, they probably won't starve. (unlike the people who need a UBI)

After implementation, acquiring "a high paying job" when you currently have none will be worth substantially less than without the BI, as you go from being a payee to a payer.

Also completely untrue. A person acquiring the high paying job would still be a payee - that is part of the charm. And again, high paid people already pay more tax - this is universally accepted in all modern progressive productive societies, and only political extremists challenge the idea.

 

[russ_watters]

Sorry for the multiple edits as I read more of the article. I'll add some more comments in a new post...

The article does vaguelly discuss some funding ideas. One of the more speicifc and probably the worst is this:

Futurist Mark Walker says we could pay for it all by slapping down a 14% VAT (value-added tax) across all goods and services, which in the U.S. would yield a guaranteed income of $10,000. It would be a start, but clearly not enough.

Since he previously said that part of the motivation for this is wealth redistribution, this is a terrible way to find it because it redistributes the wealth in the opposite direction from what he wants!

A person who earns nothing or very little before the BI would see an increase in income, but everyone else would likely see a decrease and in proportion to their income, the lower and midle classes would lose the most because they spend a larger fraction of their income on goods and services than the rich.

 

[russ_watters]

But that is how functional societies work. The people who have more than they need are taxed and that tax is spent to ensure every has basics provided to them. The current system already does that, and has done so for hundreds of years.

I understand all of that. That isn't the problem, this is:

This proposal is no different in that regard at all. The only change here is that this system is claiming to be more efficient, more effective and more equal.

No. This system claims to give everyone money. It is, at face value, an impossible claim.

And the "more equal" thing always makes me snort when I see it. People who bring up equality always want equality of outcome even while applying the label to the system/conditions that provide it. But the system that generates that equality of outcome is anything but equal: you want a vast amount of money taken from one group and given to another. If one is paying a 90% tax rate and another is receiving a -$10,000 tax grant, that's not equality in my book. More imoprtantly, that isn't the way the US was designed to operate. I'm not in favor of such a fundamental change in something that worked so well for the better part of 200 years.

That is pure conjecture...I would guess...

Right. That's part of the problem here: the ideas are so jumbled/unfocused/non-specific/lacking in details that we are forced to conjecture/guess about how they might work. But there are certainly fundamental mathematical and physical realities that must be true. Most critical here is:
Money does not grow on trees. In order to give it to one person, you need to take it from someone else.

So when a thesis statement starts with "Everyone in society receives...", you may as well stop reading there because everything that comes after it is mathematically impossible.

The reality of the situation very much depends on how the BI is funded, and many suggestions don't involve changing income tax at all. Also, what most people would consider 'High Income' is not really the target, but rather the people with excessively large incomes, and more importantly, corporations with excessively large profits.

I would guess 99% of the population would be net better off with a BI, and 0.9% would be essentially unaffected at all, and 0.1% would feel something - but don't worry about that 0.1%, they probably won't starve.

We've had many previous discussions about how far into oblivion we would have to tax the rich to achieve some goal (balancing the budget, bringing social security back into the black, etc.). Most proponents of that simply don't have any idea how little money that will actually bring in because of how few super-rich there actually are. Because I'm not sure I can find the stats as easily on the 0.1%, let's use the whole 1%:

Average income: $717,000
http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneywisewomen/2012/03/21/average-america-vs-the-one-percent/
Number of households: 1% of 123 million = 1.23 million
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/

Pulling a number out of the air, let's take half of their income. That's $440 Billion. Nice chunk of change, right? Sorry, that's ony about half of what is required to give every other American $3,000 a year and about 10% of the required funding for a base income at the poverty line.

Obviously, if we limit it to just the 0.1%, the numbers get much, much worse.

Also completely untrue. A person acquiring the high paying job would still be a payee - that is part of the charm. And again, high paid people already pay more tax...

You're just guessing again. When it comes to the normal income tax in the US, about half of American households pay it and half don't. That balancing point can't move up and still support a vast increase in tax revenue, as BI proponents propose. The middle class would have to remain payers.

 

[Another God]

This system claims to give everyone money. It is, at face value, an impossible claim.
...
So when a thesis statement starts with "Everyone in society receives...", you may as well stop reading there because everything that comes after it is mathematically impossible.

This must be an intentionally obtuse comment. Of course some people are losing more money than they gain - there is no obfuscation of this fact. The point is that at the end of the day, *everyone* gets given the same basic income (regardless of all other taxes in effect).

Right. That's part of the problem here: the ideas are so jumbled/unfocused/non-specific/lacking in details that we are forced to conjecture/guess about how they might work.

That is simply because no one has run the experiment yet. The idea that we can accurately know which exact version of it will work the best without real world application is absurd. We need to implement something, then course correct. Like we do with everything we do in life, society and business.

We've had many previous discussions about how far into oblivion we would have to tax the rich to achieve some goal (balancing the budget, bringing social security back into the black, etc.). Most proponents of that simply don't have any idea how little money that will actually bring in because of how few super-rich there actually are. Because I'm not sure I can find the stats as easily on the 0.1%, let's use the whole 1%

Average income: $717,000

Why are you just limiting it to individuals? I would think that the corporations would be where most of the money is.

And why limit it to just the income? Some people earn so much money that they just end up hoarding it to no benefit to anyone. Not even themselves. They can't even spend it all.

 

[nsaspook]

Then get a high paying job. That's the beauty of the BI, it adds up with your income.

A new article on this subject: http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-robot-1653303459

The robot uprising is the answer to humans irrational behavior.


The BI IMO is just a means to keep the unwashed masses in check. It's money as a substitute opiate for the masses so they will leave us alone by satisfying their basic needs. It's simplistic intellectual idealism at it's best and a condition for servitude to the State at it's worst.

 

[russ_watters]

This must be an intentionally obtuse comment. Of course some people are losing more money than they gain - there is no obfuscation of this fact. The point is that at the end of the day, *everyone* gets given the same basic income (regardless of all other taxes in effect).

Handing a person a check with one hand and taking a check from them with the other is a silly game. It most certainly is wrong/an obfuscation to say "everyone" is getting money if in the net, not "everyone" is and to say that the money still gets added to a "higher paying job" when it may or may not depending on where the undefined cutoff is. And indeed, your post is the first I've seen in any article or discussion of a suggested dividing line between who actually gives and who gets -- so if no dividing line is given, it is indeed an obfuscation when the only thing we're told about who gets it is that "everyone" gets it! The guy in the TED talk goes one step even worse by saying "everyone" should get it and then providing an implementation cost estimate that was based on giving it only to a small fraction of the population.

That is simply because no one has run the experiment yet. The idea that we can accurately know which exact version of it will work the best without real world application is absurd.

You need to back-up a step: before you can run an experiment, you have to devise the experiment. Don't you think it is absurd and irresponsible to support a plan that hasn't even been devised yet, much less tested? It's like with Obamacare: don't read it, just vote for it! It'll be great, I promise!

We need to implement something, then course correct. Like we do with everything we do in life, society and business.

Nonsense. In business and life, people plan. Indeed, in order to implement "something", that "something" first has to be written down. At least then, we'll know what it is that is being planned! (assuming we are allowed to read the plan before voting on it)

Why are you just limiting it to individuals? I would think that the corporations would be where most of the money is.

You're guessing again. The US corporate tax rate is the highest in the developed world, at 15-35% on profits of about $1.5 trillion. Most companies pay close to the 15% low end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_States
So, yes, if you took another 30% you'd get enough for the other half of that $3,000 per citizen that would halve the poverty rate (but still nowhere close to what is needed for a poverty-level income). But you'd also take a lot of the money that corporations use for research and development, expansion and disbursement to investors. So the secondary effect would be a major reduction in GDP growth and loss of savings growth. Bye, bye retirement savings!... Which you apparently want to take as well:

And why limit it to just the income?

Sure, you could take wealth/savings as well, but of course you could only do that once since once you take it, you can't take it again (once you take it from them, they no longer have it to give to you in year 2!). I wonder what wealth level you'd pick as your cutoff? $100,000? $1,000,000? Careful: if you go too low, you'll need to create a new retirement income program as well, since you'll be taking the retirement savings from ordinary Americans (who already can't count on Social Security).

The things you are talking about involve taking extreme amounts of money from larger than you think segments of society, as an experiment. Personally, I think "implement something" is extremely irresponsible before that "something" is very well defined and modeled.

 

[mheslep]

Sure, you could take wealth/savings as well, but of course you could only do that once since once you take it, you can't take it again

Yes seizing wealth is short-sited. But also, seizing property is theft, if done for no other reason than the fact that the target has some and the mob wants it.

 

[symbolipoint]

Free money can make sense if the money can be exchanged for some service or some kind of labor; these would be like a job, right? On the other extreme, some volunteer positions require some qualifications and the volunteer does not just get the position for the asking, in that someone evaluates the prospective volunteer first.

 

[Evo]

Can I say that the Ted talk was stupid and unrealistic?

Or is pointing out the obvious problems not ok? And no, I don't want to debate it, I think it's assinine. That's all. Just IMO. This person didn't do *due dilgence* to check if his idea was even feasible, which it's not, IMO. Some of these TED talks are garbage, IMO. They are not all quality discussions, unfortunately, some are just crank ideas.

Nassim Taleb called TED a "monstrosity that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers, like circus performers." He claimed TED curators did not initially post his talk "warning about the financial crisis" on their website on purely cosmetic grounds.[80]

Nick Hanauer spoke at TED University, analysing the top rate of tax versus unemployment and economic equality.[81] TED was accused of censoring the talk by not posting the talk on its website.[82][83] The National Journal reported Chris Anderson had reacted by saying the talk probably ranked as one of the most politically controversial talks they'd ever run, and that they need to be really careful when to post it.[82] Anderson officially responded indicating that TED only posts one talk every day, selected from many.[84] Forbes staff writer Bruce Upbin described Hanauer's talk as "shoddy and dumb"[85] while New York magazine condemned the conference's move.[86]

According to UC San Diego Professor Benjamin Bratton, TED talks efforts at fostering progress in socio-economics, science, philosophy and technology have been ineffective.

TED events are also held throughout North America and in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture, often through [b[storytelling.[/b][10] The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can

Basically, it's not peer reviewed, it's not credible, it's just someone's musings, it doesn't meet our guidelines and should be treated as such..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)#Conflicts_and_criticism

 

[russ_watters]

Can I say that the Ted talk was stupid and unrealistic?

Or is pointing out the obvious problems not ok? And no, I don't want to debate it, I think it's assinine. That's all. Just IMO. This person didn't do *due dilgence* to check if his idea was even feasible, which it's not, IMO.

...I think I already did that, no?

 

[Evo]

...I think I already did that, no?

GMTA :)

 

[OmCheeto]

GMTA :)

Sometimes.

Other times, they have differing opinions.

This idea is a bit "out there", but I think it needs more discussion.

Btw, did you have to pick crops when you were 9?

I think it matters, from where you came, as to what is, and is not, a viable solution.

 

[Evo]

Sometimes.

Other times, they have differing opinions.

This idea is a bit "out there", but I think it needs more discussion.

Btw, did you have to pick crops when you were 9?

I think it matters, from where you came, as to what is, and is not, a viable solution.

I did pick crops on my aunt's farm as a child.

 

[russ_watters]

I did pick crops on my aunt's farm as a child.

Me too, on my grandparents' farm...not that I see how this is relevant though...

 

[russ_watters]

This idea is a bit "out there", but I think it needs more discussion.

IMO it is irresponsible to release "out there" ideas onto the public from a forum that looks like it is supposed to have credibility. It causes people to believe the ideas are already well developed and credible. That's a good way to generate scams and give wings to bad ideas.

I think Ted should get itself a sort of peer review board.

I think it matters, from where you came, as to what is, and is not, a viable solution.

Oy, no. I cannot disagree more strongly. "Viable" is, for the most part, not a judgement call at all, it is a measurement (or calculation/prediction) of objective success or failure. If a business profits it is viable and if it doesn't profit, it is not viable. If this idea can "function" insofar as it is capable of collecting enough money to be self-sustaining and doesn't cause a collapse in society due to millions of people losing their jobs, that would be "viable".

Now, of course, for sociological ideas, it is difficult to know if the predictions would come true. I can't be absolutely sure that people would quit their jobs when is revealed that their jobs don't pay them any more money than not working would pay them. But I can be absolutely sure that if someone pitches an idea to give everyone "free money" and then quotes me a price that was based on only giving it to 1/5th of the population, he's lying to me and his idea isn't as "viable" as he claims.

That's completely different from whether an idea is "good", which may have been what you really meant. If a person is poor, they might want money and not care where it comes from. If a person is rich, they may not want to give money to people who aren't working for it. Maybe that's the "where you came from" bias you're referring to.