The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Campitor »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:06 am
Prior to the invention of large scale grain storage and thus the commodities market in Chicago in the 19th century, American farmers sent their goods to market in sacks marked with their own hallmark. You didn't buy a bushel of Grade B Field Corn #2, you bought sacks of a particular corn grown in a particular year from a particular farmer. So, there was no such thing as the universal "price of apples." As soon as any product or service becomes commodified, packaged and processed in a non-differentiated way, the price and the pay and quality level goes down to minimum, and any non-conforming unit of production is shunted to the dumpster. The science of economics demands the existence of uniform products and uniform providers of labor in order to make the math work, and, sadly, our reality is coming more and more to meet the demands of this reductionist philosophy.
But the question still stands - are we better off today than we were in 1776, 1876, or 1976? Superior produce can still be purchased at premium prices but the pricing makes it unaffordable for those with modest incomes. Having mass produced corn of an acceptable grade makes it widely affordable and so cheap, that we can export it to countries that can't grow their own corn.

In all economic systems there are tradeoffs. So are we better off having unequal pricing, hallmark apples, and an uneven distribution of apples to the general population? Or are we better off having apples that are widely available, of acceptable taste and quality, and priced within reach of even the most modest of salaries? Given people's behavior, there will be intersection of price and quality that is widely acceptable to the general population. There comes a point that an increase in quality no longer justifies an outlay of cash especially when that cash has other demands on it.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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A potential unwinding of the technocratic capital model is that once the masses are sufficiently impoverished there is no one left to buy smartphones. Every pyramid scheme eventually collapses.

Economic hardship for the masses might not be so bad, in some ways it forces the masses to be judicious with resources. If we hold the view that resources on the planet are limited, and if we also hold the view that the majority of people cannot resist living beyond their means, then we should want life to be harder for people, not easier.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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bigato wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:48 pm
The detail that is missing in your narrative is that most of the new technologies are exponentially cheaper and profitable, and need less and less people to make it work. This leds to the version of capitalism that we are living were a handful of big tech have more power over the world than most governments. The differences between those that have a lot and those that have nothing is increasingly bigger. Technocratic Capitalism is failing us. And I say this as one of the few privileged.
Every economic system is a function of human behavior, incentives, and the utilization of limited resources that have alternative uses. Technocratic capitalism isn't failing us - we're failing us. No one is forcing people to exchange their money for optional technology, goods, or services. People can live comfortably without the plethora of discretionary purchases they make. But people want stuff and capitalism supplies it at a price point people are willing to pay.

And merchants have been controlling governments long before automation was invented - this isn't a new problem. Government corruption is guaranteed similar to how corruption is guaranteed in any economic system including capitalism. This is why government must be kept small in order to lessen its harm and this is why businesses shouldn't be receiving corporate welfare or be allowed to lobby for anti-competitive legislation. And neither should government be handing out no-strings-attached UBI that will only incentivize more spending and sloth.

How is giving more people money to spend going to stop automation from progressing or CEO pay from expanding? Companies are automating now because of the cost of employment - so we're going to tax them even more and that will somehow automagically stop incentivizing automation's desirability? Wages are one of the few costs that a company can control either by workforce reduction, productivity pressure (you better make more widgets or I'll find someone who can), or automation. As a society we have incentivized automation as a result of our political and economic choices. A $27k dishwashing machine is a better investment than paying a single diswasher $15 dollars an hour ($31k in yearly wages) + the cost of benefits. And the more dishwashers your business requires, and the more the cost of employment rises, the better the Hobart Automated Systems start to look.
Last edited by Campitor on Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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IlliniDave wrote:-Freedom Dividend gives Warren Buffet as much as it gives anyone else, so there's an inherent inefficiency to it.
I actually think this is a point in its favor, because it takes energy to create and maintain a line separating those who need financial assistance from those who don't, and the constant input of energy needed to maintain any boundary leads to the growth of chaos in the rift. Why ban those who have passed the diving test from access to the shallows? A good many extremely frugal and/or bohemian people choose, at least for a time, to live in low-income neighborhoods in order to save money, but currently they can't gain admission to housing that is subsidized for low income only. The urban neighborhoods that are a mix of recent immigrants, artists, penny-pinching cheapskates, stubborn old women, working class semi-alcoholics, and others are much more vibrant, healthy communities than the blocks of subsidized housing.
Could well be there are other approaches with substantial efficacy, which obviously would involve ongoing redistributive activity, but I don't think Yang has the answers.
Well, as I recall, you didn't like my plan for affluent individuals to be given the privilege/responsibility to care for more than one spouse and assorted previous offspring :lol:
Campitor wrote:Technocratic capitalism isn't failing us - we're failing us. No one is forcing people to exchange their money for optional technology, goods, or services.
I am not going to be able to articulate my muddled thoughts very clearly here, but one day last year I was sitting at a table in Starbucks I had rented for a few hours with the purchase of a macchiato, studying for an online course in data science, and I realized that the "optionality" of modern technology is a myth. I didn't necessarily have to be one of the individuals all over the world sitting in relatively affluent surroundings putting my brain through oddly old-fashioned calisthenic-like problem sets based on data garnered from the sinking of a luxury liner more than 100 years ago, but the current global situation is such that somebody has to do it or people will die, because we are so over-populated we must keep spinning more and more efficient at the margins.

IOW, in 1776 the human species was living in a situation (global ecosystem) that was much more robust and resilient, because it had not yet been over-optimized. So, in that sense, each human of that era was much more wealthy than each human of this era. We have traded, down-graded, the profound complexity of the natural world in which we originally found ourselves, for the imagined complexity of a million different products which will slowly rot into oblivion over our graves.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:50 am
IOW, in 1776 the human species was living in a situation (global ecosystem) that was much more robust and resilient, because it had not yet been over-optimized. So, in that sense, each human of that era was much more wealthy than each human of this era. We have traded, down-graded, the profound complexity of the natural world in which we originally found ourselves, for the imagined complexity of a million different products which will slowly rot into oblivion over our graves.
I agree in a sense - but I think this realization still could have been had without drinking a macchiato in a Starbucks. It could have occurred drinking some tap water at home. Multiply this behavior by 250+ million people (adults in the US) and the problems of resource depletion is amplified significantly. Did you include the Starbucks anecdote for irony? If so - that was a nice literary turn. It was kind of cool.

IlliniDave
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:50 am

Well, as I recall, you didn't like my plan for affluent individuals to be given the privilege/responsibility to care for more than one spouse and assorted previous offspring :lol:
As long as it does not require compulsory participation on my part, it's fine with me for those who want to do it. Even with a single spouse over a limited span of time, 80% of my grandchildren are not related to me in the biological sense. I don't want the government assigning me more. :D

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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My sister just called asking me how to save money. I told her to stop getting her hair and nails done, stop going out for drinks a few times a week, stop going on so many vacations, and in general stop spending money on things she does not need. She said “Oh, you mean don’t live my life?” She then asked if I thought she could get approved for a new credit card so she could buy a new couch, despite the fact CreditKarma just alerted her that her credit score dropped another 50 points. Finally she asked if I could buy a rental property in the town she likes living in, so she could live there, presumably rent-free.

I replied “I might buy another rental property, but regarding tenants, Penelope Pureheart need not apply.”

ZAFCorrection
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by ZAFCorrection »

To out Mitt Romney Mitt Romney, some percentage of the population is completely useless with money, though maybe much less than 47%. The black hole lottery recipients who can go through hundreds of millions of dollars in a few years come to mind. Any reasonable justification for UBI should acknowledge that for some (maybe very small fraction) of the population, there is never enough money and there is always going to be a sob story to put in the NYT.

With that in mind, we might also want to try to estimate how many people are capable of getting self actualized, efficaciously pregnant, or becoming capitalist producers of apples. It's possible the number is not that large, or at least not large enough to spend an extra trillion or two every year.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Campitor wrote:I agree in a sense - but I think this realization still could have been had without drinking a macchiato in a Starbucks. It could have occurred drinking some tap water at home. Multiply this behavior by 250+ million people (adults in the US) and the problems of resource depletion is amplified significantly. Did you include the Starbucks anecdote for irony? If so - that was a nice literary turn. It was kind of cool.
Yes, and no and no.

You can't have it both ways. Either the capitalistic system which rewards data scientists with macchiatos is the best known system, most efficient means of allocating resources, or it isn't. Whether the data scientist in question happens to be a frugal fellow who is choosing reward of free time and lentil soup over macchiatos and steak is irrelevant.

I would suggest a simplified model in which there are two kinds of innovation possible in capitalistic system; true innovation and imaginary innovation. True innovation (invention) provides the same or better product with less resource use. Imaginary innovation (marketing) simply convinces people that a product is better. A data scientist working in Starbucks could be interrogating data for purpose of either form of innovation. But, let's imagine that he is working in the "true" realm, and immersed in the activity of interrogating data having to do with the routing of trucks for the Walmart corporation (significant player in the global food distribution network.) He is paid approximately $50/hour for performing this task, with the hope that his clever interrogation will result in a small change in systems programming which will save the Walmart corporation approximately .001$/ lb in fresh broccoli wastage costs.

So, we can imagine a balance on which we place the amount of macchiato sipped vs the amount of broccoli saved over every minute the data scientist tidies and then interrogates the data, and compare with the resources used vs. saved by the early retired data scientist sitting at home drinking water and reading Trollope, and it is pretty easy to see who is of greater benefit to society, and in any instance such as this where only "true" innovation is involved and human population is given, the planetary eco-system at large.
IlliniDave wrote:As long as it does not require compulsory participation on my part, it's fine with me for those who want to do it. Even with a single spouse over a limited span of time, 80% of my grandchildren are not related to me in the biological sense. I don't want the government assigning me more. :D
The math does get complicated these days, but I would suggest that in most such scenarios, the 20% of grandchildren who are biologically related to you, would also likely be in possession of at least 50% more grandfathers and/or grandma's boyfriends than in conventional scenario, thereby proportionally reducing your estimated future cost of Disney movie tickets and/or jellybeans.
ZAFCorrection wrote:With that in mind, we might also want to try to estimate how many people are capable of getting self actualized, efficaciously pregnant, or becoming capitalist producers of apples. It's possible the number is not that large, or at least not large enough to spend an extra trillion or two every year.
I would estimate that even in one of the best school districts in the U.S., only 10% of children who are currently 10 years old are capable, under the best of future circumstances, of someday becoming data scientists, and some of them plan on returning to China with their parents.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:52 am
You can't have it both ways. Either the capitalistic system which rewards data scientists with macchiatos is the best known system, most efficient means of allocating resources, or it isn't. Whether the data scientist in question happens to be a frugal fellow who is choosing reward of free time and lentil soup over macchiatos and steak is irrelevant.
All economic systems are not immune to the incentives created by its framework. Keep buying macchiatos and the system will keep wanting to provide it; our continuing purchases informs companies that macchiatos are highly desired regardless of the efficiencies in production. That the production of a macchiato is harmful environmentally, or the means of production wasteful in bringing macchiatos to the market, is irrelevant until its starts affecting profits. I wish it were otherwise but humans are imperfect, greedy, and shortsighted.

Companies will begin to create efficiencies or find new resources to exploit, when faced with scarcity, competition, or diminishing purchases. When those factory farming torture videos came out which impacted purchases, meat producers started offering free range meat. Same thing with antibiotics in animals - antibiotic free meat is now being sold. When roundup and pesticides started to affect profits, factory farms started to sell organic vegetables. Producers respond to market feedback. Stop buying wastefully produced macchiatos and coffee houses will start selling efficiently harvested coffee.

The US lumber industry is an example of what occurs when natural scarcity can't be bypassed. In the old days entire forests were stripped of every lumber producing tree. Now there is a schedule for each tree plot that determines when it will be cut. And after the lumber has been harvested, trees are replanted for future production. Sub-floor used to be made of solid wood but now its made from plywood which uses lumber more efficiently. The sawdust and chips produced by the sawmills are now used for particle board, wood pellet stoves, bbq brickets, etc. Capitalism is more than capable of being efficient in resource management when the market provides incentives for it. We are part of that feedback loop - how we behave within a capitalist system affects how producers manage their resources.

And I don't view economics systems via the lens of which is the best or most efficient. I view them through the lens of which is the least harmful and provides the best incentives for imperfect humans who behave imperfectly and are naively ignorant of their outsized impact on any economic system and its externalities.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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Campitor wrote:Capitalism is more than capable of being efficient in resource management when the market provides incentives for it. We are part of that feedback loop - how we behave within a capitalist system affects how producers manage their resources.
The root of the problem is that "we" identify primarily as consumers outside of the eco-system, rather than producers within the eco-system. So, we view our options as best case "do nothing", or "stay home and drink water." Therefore, "they" are always and only motivated to sell us a better, or least worse, choice. We are not encouraged to feel empowered to create our own options and relationships with and within the world. "No, baby, you don't want to go there. World of 1776 full of lions, tigers, and bears. Just relax, feel grateful for all that you got (or else!), and I'll turn on the passenger seat heat, and you just let Daddy drive the car." [I have found that one benefit of spending some time functioning as an overt submissive is that it allows you to better recognize when you (or most members of your society) are functioning as a de facto submissive.]

Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that in terms of pure efficient capitalism, or even in terms of non-renewable or land-space limited resource use, as a unit of production, a Data Scientist is worth 2.5 times more than the average income American. However, America is not just the Mecca of Capitalism, it is also a country founded on Christian values, very much including the notion that on some level, not privy to the mechanisms of the market or even hard physics, we are all created equal-ish. So, that's where UBI really comes from.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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I don’t see how the belief in Peak Oil and in an eventual breakdown in global supply chains can be reconciled with a dream of equality of outcomes. The current economic structure is built on perpetual exponential growth. If the ice caps are melting and I am with my clan in a mountain citadel, I am unlikely to open the gates however much empathy I have for the individuals clamoring outside.

If financial engineering continuously widens the gap between those with connections to banking cartels and those who don’t, I think a better approach would be to re-attach the market to the real economy, not replay the deluded hope that humans will not human as they did in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. The answer to too much centralized power is not more centralized power.

My recent telephone call with my sister suggests to me that we are not all created equal, not even when birthed by the same mother.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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@bigato

I’m an Ecuadorian immigrant and the earn your way ethic is also a South American thing or at least it is in Ecuador; no American culture required. A week didn’t go by without that being drilled into my head by every adult in my family especially the women.

Campitor
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Jun 15, 2019 11:28 am
However, America is not just the Mecca of Capitalism, it is also a country founded on Christian values, very much including the notion that on some level, not privy to the mechanisms of the market or even hard physics, we are all created equal-ish. So, that's where UBI really comes from.
We’re created equal but we’re free to pursue our life, liberty, and happiness in our own way. This type of freedom unfortunately results in disparate outcomes.

Give me UBI and I’ll generate 3x it’s value because I will make choices that maximizes its potential. Others will just buy booze and drugs. UBI will not correct outcomes caused by bad choices or incentivize better behavior.

This doesn’t mean I want the poor to suffer. I want to help them by providing mechanisms that teach financial literacy and marketable skills. Giving a person a fish will not make them a fisherman.

And since Christianity was brought into the conversation, forgive me for quoting the New Testament:

“A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” (Matthew 7:18)

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Jean
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by Jean »

I see UBI as a good tool to replace FRB with in order to control the monetary mass.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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I didn't mean to invoke a debate on the topic of Christian morality. I am not a practicing Christian. I was just thinking about what Harari wrote on the topic of the morals and myths underpinning the American Constitution. All humans created equal very well may be the best assumption for moral society, but it is not the truth in the sense that any child, given equal opportunity such as access to healthy food and decent education has the potential to grow up to be a Data Scientist.

I don't disagree that a fishing pole is of more value than a fish. In fact, one point I was trying to make is that innovation towards a better fishing pole is the ONLY way out of zero-sum competition for limited resources. The only thing I am disagreeing with is the inherently slavish notion that large scale corporations are the primary centers of innovation. (It's like "job-creators" which in another catch-phrase which makes me want to puke, even though or maybe because, I was a micro-micro "job-creator" within the context of my own micro-micro business. It does sound prettier than "human labor leverage profiteer" but maybe the reality is something betwixt and between? )

IMO, the human drive to innovate is internal and is strongly related to curiosity, risk-taking, and imagination. It can happen on many different levels and scales. For instance, when I recently learned how to identify lamb's quarters and used them in a recipe, that was an innovation within the limited context of my own domain or lifestyle. Another example would be my invention of the "lentil baby" concept which combined the symbol of extreme frugality with the concept of "sugar baby" and the salvation-through-good-housekeeping characters often found in Victorian novels. That was an example of sideways-invention that only required a modicum of knowledge in unrelated realms, rather than the sort of innovation that requires a great deal of knowledge in one realm, such as writing and publishing a research paper in physics. I am happy to offer the use of the "lentil baby" concept gratis to all of humanity, because of the high level of internal amusement this would produce for me. As an ENTP with my particular interests, all I need to do to die a very happy woman is come up with one catch-phrase which migrates into the common vernacular OR breed a tasty new perennial vegetable OR something like that. Just piling up a pile of money seems boring to me, except as means to more interesting ends. However, MMV and I believe that humans who are more of the Builder type than the Inventor/Explorer type might have different thoughts about how things might or should come to happen.

Anyways, the quote from Matthew, is actually quite relevant to this discussion, because it epitomizes how bad science is often used to prop up self-serving moral strictures. In the vast majority of very popular 19th century "rags to riches/work ethic" novels, the notion that hard work is the path to success was very much intertwined with the notion of strong direct inheritance of advanced abilities and innate moral goodness. Often, the poor orphan who worked his way up from the bottom would be revealed as accidentally abandoned child of noble birth. The biological truth, which doesn't universally apply to all species, but which very much does apply to apples and humans, is that it is very much possible for a healthy tree to bear bad fruit. Therefore, it is thoroughly hypocritical to suggest that something like UBI is a bad idea for society as a whole while leaving aside the possibility of much more Draconian inheritance tax.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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I agree that corporatism is stultifying.

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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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@7wb

Corporations are not the only centers of innovation but they certainly one of the chief means of bringing innovations to market at scale. The point I was trying to make in regards to UBI, with no-strings-attached to it, is that it makes no sense to take from those already innovating to hand it over to an entire swath of US citizens who are not currently innovators, have no plans to be innovators, and have no incentives to become innovators.

I included the quote from Matthew because of its relevance to this notion of UBI. The whole "bad tree/good tree" and subsequent "bad fruit/good fruit" was an allegory about human behavior. Humans who are up to good are doing good things (good fruit). Humans doing bad things produce bad outcomes (bad fruits). To know someone's authenticity of character, you have to look at their actions and see what fruit they are bearing. Anyone who isn't innovating is not an innovator and UBI will make him or her so.

A means tested UBI with incentives to spark innovation may be worth a limited test. But a no-strings-attached UBI is certainly unworthy of any consideration. Giving out UBI with no strings attached is giving people fish. Giving people incentive based UBI is giving them a fishing pole or at the very least the desire to procure one. Teaching people financial literacy is teaching people how to build a fishing pole, a fishing net, a fishing boat, and also educating them about the migratory patterns of fish. Sorry for beating a dead horse. Or should I say beating a dead fish?

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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

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@Campitor:

I think we may have to agree to disagree, because it seems like my personal experience is in direct opposition to yours. I am one of those super annoying people who when trapped in a corporate environment actually found meetings to be relatively enjoyable, because at least there were snacks and I could amuse myself by offering endless suggestions for improvement on any problem brought to the table. What I hated about corporate employment were all the dull hours I had to perform assigned routine or pretend to coach/motivate other adult humans.

Then I inherited less than $12,000 from my father, and I used that money to buy myself the free time and basic tools I needed to start my own business, and for quite a few years I was very happy and moderately successful at that endeavor. So, I do believe that there are people who are internally motivated towards innovation, but just maybe need a little bit of a parachute before they can jump, because I was one of them.

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Re: The benefits of a basic income // much higher min wage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

P.S.

Actually, I think we are in agreement if education towards financial literacy includes taking the risk on investing in your own endeavors as well as the very conservative choice of auto-pilot dividing the investment of your funds between businesses being run by a variety of innovators other than yourself. I mean, obviously, Elon Musk is an X times greater innovator than me, but only at Y degrees of remove. It's like patiently waiting for McDonalds to add a very palatable new item to its menu versus tooling around in the kitchen yourself. You might fail profoundly at making yourself a palatable dinner compared to what McDonalds eventually brings to market, but when you win, you win big! And this course of action is actually involves taking on MORE personal responsibility for outcome.

Or to state my belief in even more basic form, you don't need somebody, anybody, "them" to give you a job in order to work, and you don't need somebody, anybody, "them" to make a public offering in order to invest. You can always do it yourself at any level.

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