guaranteed-monthly-income-plan REJECTED

[ergophobe]

This just popped up in my feed. Haven't read it yet, but it's on topic

http://fusion.net/story/288907/why-free-money-beats-bullshit-jobs/

[Mackin USA]

Good READ

"numerous people are forced to spend their entire working lives doing jobs they consider to be pointless. Jobs like telemarketer, HR manager, social media strategist, PR advisor

Could basic income kill the welfare state?

"The third reason we need a basic income is that it would pull the plug on a welfare system that has devolved into a perverse behemoth of control and humiliation."

READ ON
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/pros-cons-guaranteed-national-income

[Rupert]

I understand the key reason the Swiss rejected it was because they cannot control their boarders.

[Mackin USA]

If that is true, the USA may NEVER have it >>> unless

[ergophobe]

"numerous people are forced to spend their entire working lives doing jobs they consider to be pointless. Jobs like telemarketer, HR manager, social media strategist, PR advisor

When I did get around to reading it, I read that one aloud to my wife.

>>http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/pros-cons-guaranteed-national-income

Good read. And this is a real problem:
 

The 2013 Cato Institute study, "The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off," found that a mother with two children participating in seven common welfare programs—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, housing assistance, WIC, energy assistance (LIHEAP), and free commodities—could take home income higher than what she would earn from a minimum wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. In fact, in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job, and in five additional states it yields more than a $15-per-hour job.

The question is whether or not that problem goes away as fewer and fewer jobs are needed.

In any case, in the US, I think the main thing is first to provide an infrastructure that allows people to work as long as there is a need to have actual people working.

An example: a friend has two rental properties. The woman who was cleaning for him had no health insurance, is living in a homeless camp and does not have reliable transportation. She was doing great and for two years never missed a cleaning (and had an apartment and a car). But living on the margin, a couple of setbacks meant that she lost the apartment and the car and has no health insurance, all of which mean that she can no longer work.

So in the US, we first need universal health coverage. The lack of it is a huge disincentive to small-scale entrepeneurship like this woman's cleaning business.

Then we do need a way to make sure that someone like this cleaner, who is a hard worker and wants to work, gets paid enough - whether through wages or negative income tax or UBI - that she can support the personal infrastructure that working requires.

I see a level of UBI that lets people sit around doing nothing as being 50 or 100 years down the road as the impacts of automation become so preponderant that few jobs are left. I don't think we're there, but universal health care and a basic UBI would, I believe, let more people work with dignity, not fewer and would remove the absurd and crushing requirement on companies to provide for the health care of their employees. What other country in the world requires this of private companies? If I were trying to invent the dumbest possible way to dole out health care, that would be it.

[ergophobe]

This is a good read.

Why Do the Poor Make Such Poor Decisions?
https://medium.com/utopia-for-realists/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions-f05d84c44f1a#.m2ek4hvwy

I realized after reading it, it's by the same guy who wrote the other one I posted, but it's a better article. Much more thought-provoking to me at least.

It definitely addresses a lot of the ideas that have been floating around this thread. Of course, he's a huge proponent and gets kind of hand wavy where the Cato Institute article points out the messiness of implementation. But gives a lot to consider in terms of how people are motivated and what keeps poor people from getting educated, working full-time and making good financial decisions.

[littleman]

Good article. 

As someone who has known a lot of poor people I could tell you that they often do not seek their own self-interest.  Most of the time it is not ignorance or stupidity, or even bad judgement that causes this.  It is more complicated than that, many have a drive toward self-destruction, others just don't think they should be (for some reason) anything more than what they currently are.  I could share many stories on the topic.  I do think that it is a learned behavior, most of the time its past on from parent to child.

I am not saying that everyone in poverty is this way, but most of the multi-generation, native born poor I have known are.  That's the rub with Basic Income, it will not fix these guys.  Maybe the best that can be done is to control the spillover?

How does this translates into the future with rising unemployment?  I have no idea.

[ergophobe]

>>it will not fix these guys

This podcast speaks to that question.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/would-a-big-bucket-of-cash-really-change-your-life-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

[rcjordan]

I don't do podcasts or videos, so my apologies for not delving into that one, EG.

I once read an editorial that I'll have to paraphrase;  "If 100% of the assets in the US were redistributed equally to every person in the country with the proverbial 'push of the button,' they would again become massively unequal overnight."

[Rupert]

My apologies to ergophobe... I skim read unless I have the phone set to auto download podcasts

[ergophobe]

I get it. I don't do video and I never did podcasts until a year ago when I "acquired" a daily commute with poor radio reception.

I would have summarized, but I only remembered the topic, not the findings. I *think* the findings were that after the great land gift of 1832, within two generations, most people had failed to hold onto the acquired wealth, while a minority had.

There was another recent article (Economist?) about how recent research showed that the wealthiest families in Florence from the tax roles of the thirteenth century still are among the wealthiest Florentines.

[littleman]

I actually like audio and video lectures quite a bit.  They let me somewhat passively learn when I am doing other tasks.  I can't read when I code or do math, but I can listen while doing either.

[rcjordan]

>Florence

I saw so many headlines on that but never read any of the articles. Smells a little of bullshit to me.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/19/the-wealthy-in-florence-today-are-the-same-families-as-600-years-ago/

<added>
What I've witnessed is more along the "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in 3 generations" line.

[ergophobe]

>>Florence

Like any research, there is a loss of nuance as you go from research to mass media article to mass media headline

The article keeps saying that Italy is special because names are highly regional so they can say that someone in Florence today with a certain last name is very likely to be the descendant of the person who lived in Florence in the 13th century and had the same last name. I'm not an Italian demographer, so I have no idea whether that is BS or not.

[ergophobe]

I actually like audio and video lectures quite a bit. 

Maybe you'll support this effort then....
http://th3core.com/talk/water-coolerextra/books-and-podcasts-that-hit-home/