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 »

daylen wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 2:45 pm
I haven't said anything about the rich or UBI, and I just said that our genetic coding can be conditioned. Clearly you are missing my point that control is mostly an illusion.
I don't believe control is an illusion otherwise we'd still be sophisticated monkeys beating each other with sticks. I'm framing my argument within the UBI context because we're in a thread about UBI.

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

Post by daylen »

From my perspective, we still are sophisticated monkeys beating each other with memes. Statistics, optimization, and so forth are what we resort to when we want to justify what we were programmed to unconsciously do.

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

Post by Campitor »

bigato wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 3:47 pm
Campitor: have you considered the possibility that you may be missing the point sometimes? Like, when a big, crowdsourced wikipedia page full of links to peer-reviewed studies, documentaries and data is dismissed as being "a single source", do you think there is the possibility that you may be slightly biased here? I get it you are the success example of an immigrant who succeeded, but do you think it may be possible that you have survivor bias?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/:
So we have little evidence on the effectiveness of peer review, but we have considerable evidence on its defects. In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud it is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias, and easily abused.
I'm not dismissing the fact that I may be biased. That a source is an amalgamation of peer-reviewed studies doesn't mean the data is accurate, has been reviewed accurately, or hasn't been peer reviewed by those with similar bias. And it's possible that I have survivor bias but considering that the US is the richest country on earth with a very high standard of living for most of its citizens, and it's still the highest immigration destination in the world, that means the that likelihood of survival is very high; in other words my success isn't a fluke. I'm not arguing my point because I think the rich need protecting, I'm arguing my points because I believe I'm protecting the poor. The rich are a necessary "evil" and without them our tax revenues will drop which will affect those below the poverty line the most; I don't think the rich are anymore evil than the average citizen.

I'll close with a quote from the French economist Frédéric Bastiat:

“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”

*** Edit ***
Also, are you really comparing your opinion to Einstein's?
No - just highlighting the fact that smart men have beliefs which are informed by examination of data and research. I wouldn't put myself anywhere near Einstein but I can try to emulate his logic and his habit of examination and research. The moral being - be more like Einstein - do the research and examine the data dispassionately. If the data supports your view then I'll change my mind. But income, wealth, and the associated statistics are co opted by bias and politics on both sides (for and against redistribution) so they have to be examined carefully and independently.
Last edited by Campitor on Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by Campitor »

daylen wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 3:42 pm
From my perspective, we still are sophisticated monkeys beating each others with memes. Statistics, optimization, and so forth are what we resort to when we want to justify what we were programmed to unconsciously do.
That we are beating other with memes/statistics/etc., and not sticks means we are at least choosing our weapons. The OS may be in charge but we've managed to install drivers and APIs that affect outcomes and actions.
Last edited by Campitor on Sun Jun 30, 2019 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Campitor wrote: We can't have Shannon's without producing Rockefellers anymore than we can have honey producing insects without some having stingers.
So, Rockefeller was like a Queen Bee, because Queen Bees only use their stingers to kill other potential rival Queen Bees, often before they even hatch. OTOH, Marie Curie was more like an outlier worker bee who takes on the risk of flying more than 5 miles from the hive in search of new source of pollen, even though she might run out of enough energy to keep her wings beating before she achieves success, and then fall to the ground dead of radiation poisoning. Thus, it follows that your typical corporate middle-manager is like a drone bee, highly specialized to perform just one function, his greatest hope being that he will rise close enough to a Queen that the opportunity to break off the bulbous end of his endophallus as result of massive ejaculation followed shortly by death will occur. Not the first analogy I would have chosen, but I agree it has some merit.

OTOH, even though we must applaud the valiant efforts of the most far flying worker bee, it does not seem to me that this behavior constitutes the full range (see what I did there?-see "embodied mind" theory) or complexity of what we mean when we speak of human innovation. It's just more "pollen piled upon pollen" like the "wooden plows piled upon wooden plows" in the bit I quoted above. OTOH, it is easy to see that the risk-taking worker bee is of greater long-term net benefit to the hive than, for instance, the worker bee who simply works twice as many hours without taking risk of flying further out, because any other worker bee could have just as easily harvested those nearby flowers.

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

Post by ether »

Let's say magically communism is achieved and all wealth is equally given to every man woman and child in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... tal_wealth

In the USA there is an estimated 100 trillion in wealth and 316 million citizens that means everyone gets $316k and magically the government annuitizes that with a 4% withdrawal rate since people aren't good with money and might blow it. That gives everyone about $1k a month in basic income. So your normal american family of four could live pretty nice simply on the national dividend.

But this only works in really rich countries, if global communism was achieved the wealth of the entire world is only 317 trillion and there are 7.5 billion people which works out to only $140/month for everyone.
Last edited by ether on Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by Campitor »

ether wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 5:51 pm
In the USA there is an estimated 100 trillion in wealth and 316 million citizens that means everyone gets $316k and magically the government annuitizes that with a 4% withdrawal rate since people aren't good with money and might blow it. That gives everyone about $1k a month in basic income. So your normal american family of four could live pretty nice will not having to work.
If you seized the entire wealth of the country and redistributed it equally for UBI, how would you pay for future liabilities and servicing the debt without printing more money which would erode the buying power of all annuities? I've read that future liabilities (75 year projection) add up to roughly 240 to 300 trillion depending on the source. And does your math include funding defense, foreign aid, etc?
Last edited by Campitor on Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by Campitor »

bigato wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:09 pm
Campitor, you're missing the point even when it is in your favor, chill out dude
I am chilled out. Not sure why you feel otherwise. People are making assertions, observations, and proffering opinions on a thread whose purpose is to invite discussion. I'm participating in the discussion. Perhaps I should have used smiley emojis in my responses (see the emoji thread for reference). :D

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

Post by Campitor »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 4:22 pm
...his greatest hope being that he will rise close enough to a Queen that the opportunity to break off the bulbous end of his endophallus as result of massive ejaculation followed shortly by death will occur...
Seems like a glorious death. If you're going to die no better way than having a life ending orgasm. :lol: :lol: :lol:

At least some of us get to go that way: https://youtu.be/VVlkavFb-aU?t=73

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

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Campitor:

Not so funny if you've ever had the thought "What if it happens while he's with me and then I have to call his wife?" :oops:

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

Post by Campitor »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:34 pm
@Campitor:

Not so funny if you've ever had the thought "What if it happens while he's with me and then I have to call his wife?" :oops:

That would be brutal but the goal would be a mutually deadly orgasmic paroxysm under that scenario. :shock:

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

Post by ether »

Campitor wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 7:05 pm
If you seized the entire wealth of the country and redistributed it equally for UBI, how would you pay for future liabilities and servicing the debt without printing more money which would erode the buying power of all annuities? I've read that future liabilities (75 year projection) add up to roughly 240 to 300 trillion depending on the source. And does your math include funding defense, foreign aid, etc?
heheh you discovered the flaw with universal income. At 100 trillion total wealth, a safe withdrawal rate is only 4 trillion but total state and federal spending stands at 7.2 trillion. We're dipping into the trust fund of national wealth and soon there won't be as much wealth to go around at current spending level :twisted:

Source: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

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

Post by Campitor »

ether wrote:
Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:02 pm
We're dipping into the trust fund of national wealth and soon there won't be as much wealth to go around at current spending level :oops:
This is like watching those videos of cars trying to beat the railroad crossing gate but they get stuck on the tracks - you know the train is coming and they are screwed. In this case it's the American economy on the tracks and the unfunded liabilities are the train. :(

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

Post by daylen »

Campitor wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 3:22 pm
I'm framing my argument within the UBI context because we're in a thread about UBI.
..we are at least choosing our weapons.
I suppose I have not been attempting to deconstruct your frame, but to offer counter-assumptions for another frame. Multiple frames can help paint a more complete picture of an issue or situation. The frame I presented leans more towards a deterministic + relativistic view.

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

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@daylen:

My note would be that nobody questions the deterministic + relativistic view as it applies to the far left of the curve. For obvious instance, everybody accepts that a child with severe autism will need financial assistance for life and should not be subject to standard punishment when he does something dangerous with a pair of scissors he grabbed from his teacher's desk. So, it seems to me that most boundaries imposed by "means testing" also describe the line at which frame-work is given hard-flip.


**********

Anyways, my position on the subject of UBI is that it should be linked to median "head tax." IOW, it should be a universal rebate of the de facto tax imposed by governmental bodies on an imagined "any citizen" attempting to survive, like an animal might survive, but suffering loss in this attempt due to zoning and vagrancy codes, etc. So, for instance, if legal occupancy maximum is 2 humans per bedroom plus one couch surfer* and minimum otherwise unsubsidized rent is $800, and maybe the fine for dumpster diving or foraging berries in the public park is $5 for each occurrence, then UBI should be something like $310/month = $3720/year. This would leave open the option to change/reduce legislation prohibiting behaviors such as tent camping in the park in order to reduce tax burden on more affluent members of society. Otherwise, there is a sort of hypocrisy in asserting that less government force is good when it mainly affects the affluent, but more government force is good when it mainly affects the poor.

My take on this matter was somewhat influenced by the reactions I witnessed when I played hostess to 3 young Iranian women, who had grown up under sanctions, when they first saw the conditions and all the wandering homeless people in Detroit. As in, "How can this happen in such a wealthy country?" (OTOH, they did love Costco.)

*Another factor that is interesting to consider would be social (or maybe even anthropological)restrictions on efficient use of housing. For instance, think about how rarely it occurs that two 30-something couples share a two bedroom apartment vs. 4 20-something same gender students.

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

Post by Campitor »

@bigato

No one is asking anyone to grow taller but since this is a thread about UBI, we're arguing that some people don't need to be taller - they are tall enough. To co-opt the analogy of "shortness" imagine there exists the country of Heightopia. In Heightopia there is a 10ft fence that has to be climbed to reach a country where everyone lives a better life - this country is called MoneyUpTheWazzoo.

The only way to get over the fence is by stacking boxes until you can get over it. Climbing over the fence consumes the box (just like 12k UBI would get consumed when spent). The tall people can pull themselves over the 10ft fence without the box but using the box makes it easier. The short people can't climb over the fence using just 1 box.

MoneyUpTheWazoo already has a bunch of people living there; some are short and some are tall. Some MoneyUpTheWazzo people, including some who are short, want to give only short Heightopians boxes.

Some of the MoneyUpTheWazoo people, including some who are tall, want to give all Heightopians and MoneyUpTheWazzooans boxes to climb the fence which baffles some of the people in MoneyUpTheWazzoo since they are already there.

There's only enough money and wood in MoneyUpTheWazzoo to build 1 box per person if they are distributed to everyone. Most of the short Heightopia people can't climb the fence to reach MoneyUpTheWazzoo with only 1 box. Most of the tall Heightopia people can reach MoneyUpTheWazzoo without a box.

I'm arguing that we shouldn't be giving boxes to tall Heightopians because they don't need it, we shouldn't be giving boxes to MoneyUpTheWazzooans because they don't need it, and we should only be giving it to short Heightopians who want to climb the fence. I don't want to waste the boxes because I know no more boxes are coming once the wood and money are gone. And I also want to teach Heightopians how to grow their own wood and save/pool money so they can build their own boxes and pass the knowledge down to future generations so they can all reach MoneyUpTheWazzoo. You seem to want to give everyone, short and tall on both sides of the fence, 1 box.

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

Post by Campitor »

@bigato

That's a interesting thread - thanks for posting it. Some of my favorites quotes from that thread:
capital is exponentially more portable than labor. With globalization, capital in the form of investments can move wherever it needs to to grow, it's borderless. Labor however, in order to grow wealth has to physically move. Remote jobs for basic labor doesn't exist - that's almost exclusively knowledge work.

So if you're a coal miner, your ability to create wealth is extremely limited to certain physical places. If you're a remote Java dev, you can code from anywhere and grow wealth much easier, but there is a serious time cost to switching work. If you're an investor and just need to drop money into an account, not only can you do it from anywhere, you can move things around more or less immediately with little (relative) cost.

It's about portability of the thing that is growing the wealth. Labor = slow, Capital = fast.
and
Even things that are true are often reported in a way that obscures causal factors. For example, wages are stagnating, but total compensation (wages plus benefits) is not. Now, from an employee’s perspective, they might not care that their total compensation is growing because health insurance premiums are increasing but paychecks are staying the same size. But the employer has the exact opposite perspective: the employee is costing more money whether that money is going to to paychecks or benefits. Failure to articulate that distinction moreover leads you to the wrong conclusions. When you’re told about wage stagnation but growing corporate profits, you’re supposed to think employees are getting a smaller piece of the pie. That’s not true: https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/w13953.html

> Total employee compensation was 66 percent of national income in 1970 and 64 percent in 2006. This measure of the labor compensation share has been remarkably stable since the 1970s. It rose from an average of 62 percent in the 1960s to 66 percent in the 1970s and 1980s, and then declined to 65 percent in the 1990s where it has remained from 2000 until the end of 2007.

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

Post by latearlyFI »

I don't understand those against UBI. If you're against it, what are you for?

Were you okay with the Bank Bailout and the 15% Corporate Tax cuts?
Are you okay with Amazon & other big companies paying zero Federal tax?
Do you think Alaska should abolish their current dividend?
Are you for the wealthy keeping their wealth in off-shore tax havens, letting the proletariat carry it all via income tax?
Are you for abolishing welfare because they're all lazy drug takers?
Do you want to raise college education and get rid of scholarships?
Do you want to get into the Student Loan market and cash in on that scam?

This country needs a new plan. I think UBI is the answer. I read Andrew Yang's book, "The War on Normal People", and it makes total sense. It redistributes tax obligations, it redistributes the savings created by automation. It helps the poor, the working poor, the students.

The Automation revolution is happening. Waymo is a self driving taxi service already operating in Arizona, Accenture just laid off 40,000 people. Millions more will be laid off in the next few years. There is no going back, the only clear solution anyone has offered is Yang. In one of his interviews he said he went to Washington to find out what they're planning on doing about it, the number one response was, "We don't talk about that". That is very creepy.

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

Post by IlliniDave »

Were you okay with the Bank Bailout and the 15% Corporate Tax cuts? No/Yes.
Are you okay with Amazon & other big companies paying zero Federal tax? Yes, if they follow the laws.
Do you think Alaska should abolish their current dividend? No. That's up to Alaska to decide, not me.
Are you for the wealthy keeping their wealth in off-shore tax havens, letting the proletariat carry it all via income tax? No, but I don't blame them.
Are you for abolishing welfare because they're all lazy drug takers? No.
Do you want to raise college education and get rid of scholarships? No.
Do you want to get into the Student Loan market and cash in on that scam? No.

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

Post by Campitor »

latearlyFI wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 11:32 am
I don't understand those against UBI. If you're against it, what are you for?
I'm for helping those that need help. Giving money to those who don't need it is wasteful.
Were you okay with the Bank Bailout and the 15% Corporate Tax cuts?
I'm not okay with bailing out banks. Poor business decisions shouldn't be rewarded. Banks should be allowed to fail so that other banks don't repeat or escalate bad business practices. However when the US Government pressures banks into giving loans to people who couldn't afford the homes they were purchasing, and those homeowners default on their loans, the US government should bail out banks when government policy contributes to a bank's failure, I'm not exonerating the banks - they exacerbated the problems with their derivative bundling of loans.

And since so many banks were affected by this bad loan scheme, it was in the US government's interest to prevent the collapse of so many banks in order to protect the "proletariat". That banks benefitted was an undesired but necessary evil. Bailing out the banks was one of the decisions that Obama made that I supported. And I would rather see a paying down of the US debt than a corporate tax cut.
Are you okay with Amazon & other big companies paying zero Federal tax?

No but currently it's legal.
Do you think Alaska should abolish their current dividend?
That's up to Alaska. And the dividend isn't paid out to everyone - those charged with a felony and incarcerated don't get money.

And the money distributed isn't a set amount:

The amount of each payment is based upon a five-year average of the Permanent Fund's performance and varies widely depending on the stock market and many other factors. The PFD is calculated by the following steps:

Add Fund Statutory Net Income from the current plus the previous four fiscal years.
Multiply by 21%
Divide by 2
Subtract prior year obligations, expenses and PFD program operations
Divide by the number of eligible applicants
Are you for the wealthy keeping their wealth in off-shore tax havens, letting the proletariat carry it all via income tax?

No but I'm not blind to the tax pressures that makes it a favorable option. The more pressure you put on the rich, the more incentive they have to legally offshoring of money. That's right - it's legal. Any US resident can offshore money but most probably never researched it. Rich people like to research this kind of stuff - just ask your congressman or senator - they legally offshore too - at least the rich ones do.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/m ... ing-it.asp:

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hold money out of your home country. First, there’s the tax treatment. In many countries, you can earn money tax-free. How would you like to put your money to work in another country, earn some fat capital gains and pay zero taxes to that country? That’s technically possible when you move your money offshore.

Even the United States allows it. In recent years, the United States has become one of the world’s favorite tax havens. States like Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota now hold a large amount of foreign money, but the reason is not primarily for the favorable tax treatment.

Are you for abolishing welfare because they're all lazy drug takers?
No and they are not all lazy drug takers. Why do you think people on welfare are lazy drug takers? However there are people who are drug takers that get welfare so it's probably a good thing they are given assistance for housing, medicine, and food instead of cash which would probably be used for drugs which is what addicts do - they exhaust their money feeding their drug habit instead of purchasing food, housing, and medicine.
Do you want to raise college education and get rid of scholarships?
Yes - I want to raise the quality of all college education so that it's a world class education but I don't want to increase the cost - colleges administrators are doing a very good job of raising prices without my help. Why would I want to get rid of scholarships? I think the needy should get scholarships if the money is available and they show the proper academic aptitude.
Do you want to get into the Student Loan market and cash in on that scam?
Huh? What scams are you talking about? You have to be specific. Are you using "scam" sarcastically or are you talking about specific scams such as companies posing as legitimate scholarship agencies who take your money but provide no scholarships? And NO - I don't want to scam anyone regardless the business sector in question. And yes - college is a business - the people who work there are not working for free.
This country needs a new plan. I think UBI is the answer. I read Andrew Yang's book, "The War on Normal People", and it makes total sense. It redistributes tax obligations, it redistributes the savings created by automation. It helps the poor, the working poor, the students.

The Automation revolution is happening. Waymo is a self driving taxi service already operating in Arizona, Accenture just laid off 40,000 people. Millions more will be laid off in the next few years. There is no going back, the only clear solution anyone has offered is Yang. In one of his interviews he said he went to Washington to find out what they're planning on doing about it, the number one response was, "We don't talk about that". That is very creepy.
The country does need a plan but UBI isn't it. And automation will stop when the cost of automation is no longer the better economic option versus hiring humans. Keep raising the cost of employment on businesses and they will keep adopting automation.

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