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ampillion · 5 years

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If it works one way, it works both ways.

So, here’s a thing I thought I’d start writing up to express just how frustrating it is listening to conservatives talk or post about socialism in the US that are either so factually incorrect as to be incoherent, or so out of the loop that they sound like I expect my grandparents would if they were trying to talk about modern electronic music. Of course, I could totally make the argument that most of these people don’t actually care about being factually correct about socialism, or about discussing any sort of leftist ideology. Especially on places like Facebook, where you’re able to cultivate your group of friends and family to the point where you can push out any sort of dissenting opinions by simply not hearing them in the first place. Most of these posts are, to steal the conservative buzzword they love to apply to only people on the left, just virtue signalling. They’re not actually interested in discovering a truth, they’re not actually interested in having a conversation, they just want to shit on a thing they don’t understand and have a bunch of friends send them Likes, or Hearts, or Yeahs!, or whatever other self-validating thing makes them feel better. They want to tell their in-group that ‘Hey that thing we all hate? I hate it too man! Yeah, we’re great!’ To remind them they’re part of the Us, and not the Them. In the end though, that isn’t all that productive. Me pointing out all the ‘triggered’ conservative ‘snowflakes’ crying about Nikes or Keurig coffeemakers or NFL players kneeling. All the ‘identity politics’ based around conservative Christians, or gun-owners, or just being white. All the ‘media bias’ that particular outlets have in sharing just as much bullshit as others, just fellating one side instead of the other. All it proves is that a lot of things are universal among human beings with opinions. The problem here is that politics is a complicated beast. One could argue that the majority of your positions in life, should you have ever had any sort of opinion on them, is simply politics. Being that we are social creatures and we interact in so many places, at so many different levels, and we all have a lot of different opinions on a lot of things, there’s always going to be difference of politics. The goal then, as humans, should always be to sit down and discuss these things. To be open to discussion on these things. To figure out why we all have our ideology, and what got us there. Of course, in the modern US, bereft of the socialism that these folks so hate, the large majority of people in this country do not have the time to engage with others on these topics, let alone even inform themselves of a position all that well. They could certainly find the time, everyone could, but then you’re actually asking someone to read dry history books, or listen to discussions. Or, just to engage with something with a larger portion of time than they might normally do. That’s probably a big ask from people that are juggling jobs, financial stress, family, social groups, hobbies, housekeeping and homemaking already. Which is why I say I understand why people who are ignorant of a thing, a concept, an idea, can spend plenty of time gnashing teeth and spreading nonsense about it, but little time actually engaging in anything more in-depth with that concept. Why sit down and try to use my time to sit down and unpack something particularly complicated that I’m wrong about? Why add to my list of responsibilities something along the lines of self-betterment, that won’t directly help me outside of having a broader understanding of something, but will cut into my already current routine called life? I get it. The thing is: This idea works both ways. The reason why conservatives don’t understand that, is that conservatism relies on tradition. It relies on things being as they are now, or as they were. It is rooted in an essence of not changing, or resisting change. Conservatism works fine as a concept for things like managing natural resources, in trying to protect environments, protecting natural habitats for wildlife. It works as a means of helping things outside our society that cannot discuss issues. Now, I could be very wrong on this, and I could be just taking what I see from conservative posters and extrapolating something that isn’t there, but from the outside looking in: US Conservatism and reality are in constant opposition, for one specific reason. The passing of time and the constant change that brings. Society, human beings are not a monolith. Unless we just stopped asking questions about the entirety of our existence tomorrow, somebody’s always going to ask ‘Why? How?’ If somebody’s always asking why, somebody’s always going to try to find out the Whys and the Hows. What if those Whys and Hows try to figure out why conservatives revere tradition? What if those Whys and Hows try to figure out Gods and Religions? What if people question the conservative ideology? How much change can conservatives handle, or in what ways? After all, for those of us that’ve grown up seeing Reaganism conservatives being the mainstream, and then see that conservatives are backing Trump, we have to have assumed that something has massively changed, as Reagan and Trump are vastly different Presidents, vastly different individuals, and yet Evangelical white conservative voters heavily favored both. Again, more Whys. Again, more Hows. Because even from the outside looking in, this shouldn’t make sense even to conservatives. So, my perception has to be, that conservatism in the US is about denying the reality of the world. How can someone be for small government, but for a Border Wall that will require the government to use eminent domain to take property away from people to put it on? How can someone claim that the US is a Christian country, but also be racist, or against immigration reforms that would allow more people to become legalized citizens? How can someone be anti-Government, but be pro-Military and pro-Police, groups directly associated with enforcing penalties for the Government? Where is this going? What does this have to do with the socialism stuff from earlier? If we use the same logic that conservatives do, in that I get to pick any specific part of a thing, and claim that thing to be Conservatism, regardless of how well versed I am on the subject, aren’t I entirely justified in doing the exact same thing? Because I, like some conservatives that understand little about, say, Nazi Germany and think that ‘because it says socialist in the title, it’s socialist’, can do the same thing with conservative views and conservative movements. Funny though, how conservative movements in Europe and the US, are trying to prop up Nationalism, the other word in that suuuuper bad National Socialist phrase. Funny though, how conservative media outlets and pundits have tried to pretend that Hitler was a Liberal. Or that fascism, an ideology that’s perfectly pro-capitalism, is somehow leftist in origin. Again, a lot of denial about the reality of the world, of history. After all, Reagan sold weapons to conservative radicals in Iran, to fund conservative militias in Nicaragua. So I could easily say, “Ah, conservatism is all about enabling conservatives to keep a grip on government power, even if we’re literally selling weapons to people that shout for the death of our country.” After all, George W invaded Iraq and Afghanistan with the goal of finding WMDs and Bin Laden, found neither, and ended up destabilizing both countries further and bolstering ISIS. So I could easily say, “Ah, conservatism is all about US imperialism, sticking our noses in places it doesn’t belong, while shitting all over the concept of individual or national sovereignty.” After all, Nixon, Trump, and Reagan’s administrations did and have done illegal things in the sake of keeping power in the hands of the Republican party, and supporting other conservative governments. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are all about lying and breaking the law, so long as it’s them and nobody else doing it. Conservatism is entirely based on hypocrisy.” After all, Republican members of Congress like Steve King or Roy Moore, or Donald Trump even have made statements to defend things such as white supremacy, pedophilia, and sexual harassment. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are all about morality and family, but are fine with immoral behavior from those they support.” After all, slave owners used to use the Bible to justify owning slaves, because of the Bible containing passages that condone slave ownership, but zero passages stating not to own slaves. And since socialists or any other leftist doesn’t base their political ideology on the Bible, I can only assume those people were also conservative. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are fine hiding behind their religious beliefs to justify terrible things, even when they proclaim the US as a bastion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, or Liberty and Justice for all. They really don’t actually mean all. They mean ‘Us’. The conservatives.” You get the gist. If all I do is look at the actions of conservative movements, conservative people online, conservative politicians, I get a really bad picture of conservatives. That doesn’t mean I have a strong grasp on what conservatives themselves are trying to do now, what those positions are, and what informs them of their positions. All it means is this: If you want to try and tell me that Socialism is bad, because of stuff you don’t understand from the 40′s and 60′s, and I tell you that you’re wrong because you don’t understand them. Then you decide you don’t want to be bothered to learn why, then am I entirely justified to have all kinds of misconceptions about all the immoral, illogically consistent things that conservatives have done since the 80′s? Or, since, ever? Because if I’m not, you’ve really only confirmed my misconceptions, in that conservatism is only about ‘rules for thee, not for me.’ It is only about protecting the Us, and vilifying whatever ‘Them’ conservatives have picked out this month. The difference is, I’m here willing to listen. Willing to talk and engage. To explain those misconceptions and where they came from. To actually explain leftist positions, leftist policies. To actually explain, yes, things like socialism. Are you willing to explain conservatism?

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ampillion · 9 years

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The Balance of Progress and Conservation.

8The two ideas make up a lot of the basis for political activity, and conflict, in the US. Likely in much of the world. The goals of those who believe in progressive or conservative ideas aren’t always entirely opposite of one another, they just see different paths to the same end goal. Sometimes one path works more effectively than another.

Progressive ideas want to see change. Those that believe in progressive ideas see a problem, an issue, and want to see it changed. This can be in an array of different changes: More banking or environmental regulation. Deregulation or removal of laws that enable businesses to monopolize on an area.

Conservative ideas generally want to protect something, be it a traditional value, a protected right, historical sites, or personal freedoms. This is primarily thought to require deregulation or weaker government to accomplish, or at least, an aire of fiscal responsibility.

Of course, in US politics, you end up with a greater risk of perversion of these ideas that ends up damaging individuals more than helping them. US Justice is focused not on rehabilitation of people who have broken laws, but punishing them at the satisfaction of victims. Or where there is no victim, the public at large. Politically, tackling the problem becomes impossible as instead of being able to make a rational argument about the cost and effectiveness of the current system, a candidate can be attacked for being ‘soft on crime/criminals’, even if the citizens are losing more money paying people to process and pursue petty criminals, than to the criminals themselves.

So, in other words, while we look tough on crime, we’re also doing a lot of damage to ourselves in the process. We create large amounts of financial drain, we create large groups of people who are now unable to function in society as properly as others, due to our decision to punish them harshly. That isn’t to say that people shouldn’t be punished, but at a certain point we need to figure out who actually deserves harsh punishment, and who would be much more beneficial under rehabilitation. Or even better, creating systems that would prevent the need for expensive, elongated prison sentences by deterring crime in the first place. That might require decriminalization of certain things, or added expense being shifted towards drug addiction treatment, youth work programs, and other community projects that can give individuals that might see illegal activities as their only means of advancement a better connection to their community.

Now, its fairly obvious what side of the fence I lean towards when we get to the idea of conservation or progress, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a balance to these things. In fact, a balance is absolutely necessary to better the country as a whole, we just lack it. We simply lack actual progressive representation in the current US government. Don’t believe me?

What sort of progress has been made on resolving poverty over the last, say, two decades? Let’s look at the average and median wages in the US, and then look at the inflation during a set period. Going by the most recent number on the chart, 2013, the Average wage was 43,041.39, the Median wage was 28,031.02. What does that mean? The average is based off of taking the highest and lowest wages, and finding the exact middle point. Meaning that if we suddenly all got paid the same amount for our labor, we would all make about that much. (I don’t believe this tabulates things like benefits compensation, capital gains, stock options and the like, meaning that even the highest brackets are making more than this, it just is not reflected here in these numbers.)

The median meanwhile, is the wage amount most directly in the middle amongst all individuals working. So, in 2013, roughly 50 percent of people working made 28k or less. Total. Now, comparing that to numbers at 1990 might seem like a big upgrade (considering the median in 1990 was 14,498.74), but when you factor for inflation, that 90′s 14k median was worth $25,842.26 in 2013 dollars. Meaning that in a little over two decades, half the people in the US saw an increase of just $2,188.76 actual dollars in about 23 years time.

“But this is economical, not political!” The two are, like it or not, quite intertwined. Government can influence economics in a myriad of ways, from tax incentives to zoning laws, from EPA guidelines to minimum wage laws. And while we did at least add several thousands of jobs during that time (From around 109,184,000 employed in 1990 to 135,293,000 at the start of 2013) While this may not seem like much, there was a slight offset in cheaper goods being produced overseas and outside the US, making some products cheaper and making those dollars last longer. However, not everything decreased in cost. Gasoline skyrocketed, running about 1.07 on average in 1994 (Or, $1.71 in 2014 dollars), while bumping up to 3.43 by the end of 2014. Rent, and home values in general, jumped as well, further straining that modest increase.

“Everyone just needs to work harder/go back to school and get better jobs!” Except, numerically, there’s already more unemployed people in the vast majority of job categories than there are available jobs. Only three categories buck this trend: Wholesale Trade, Finance/Insurance, and Health Care/Social Assistance. Unless people go into these trades specifically, they would likely be competing against someone with a skill set that was once in that industry. If you look at the chart in fact, we haven’t had enough jobs to go around in any year going back to the year 2000.

Historically, there has never been a period of full employment, going back as far as 1948

In fact, full employment is not really a possibility without inflation. Meaning, to achieve full employment generally requires monetary policy that ends up devaluing the dollar.

So, unless the goal is to make our money worth less than it currently is, the answer isn’t simply to create more jobs. And while upping the minimum wage does increase base wages, it can also encourage employers to look for cheaper options, such as off-shoring labor or automating manufacturing and services.

The progressive approach would likely be four-fold. First, taxes. Yes, I’m sure people will cry foul about increasing taxes on things, but here’s the deal: The nature of progressive taxation is to make sure there’s a motivation to invest, and a greater harmony in wealth equality from the top to the bottom. I’m not going to link the dozens of charts depicting how that’s changed in awhile, nor will I mention that we’re rather low in the taxes department historically (for the top percentiles, anyway.)

Tax rates on the rich need to rise. They have to. Otherwise, tax burdens will continue to be dumped on individuals who are making a lot less money. Considering that the top tax rate is currently 39.6%, and that’s on money beyond $413,201 a year, there’s a lot of gap that needs to be made up by those filing below that. We can get into arguments here about why the wealthy should have to pay so much more, when there are people who pay little to nothing, but my response would be that the solution to that is? Increasing wages, so that individuals would in turn, pay more taxes. So, either way those that own businesses would likely end up paying more in either direction. Increasing wages would, of course, be the best way to resolve the issues. There is however, no way to simply increase wages, without the employer choosing to do so, outside of simply blanket increasing the minimum wage. Which, in my opinion, isn’t quite as good as a solution implementing a UBI.

We could simply say ‘We need to cut the government budget!’, which would also work... if you can find a way to do that. Removing funding from things such as defense, or welfare programs, will only lead to a decrease in either security or overall societal health. You can streamline, you can make the government more efficient, but it will be terribly difficult to truly make any big cuts in the budget. Not to mention that there will be costs needed to improve infrastructure and technology to make the government more efficient. Removing government personnel means more unemployed, and more welfare, not less. So how will we pay for all the things we need to change? Taxes. Again, mainly on those above that bracket above. So, unless you’re making 350k or more, you shouldn’t be too concerned.

There are other, more progressive ways to create funds, such as taxing carbon emissions or collecting funds from oil, gas, coal, and other natural, non-renewable resources and using them a la the Alaskan Permanent Fund. Creating a national system along the same lines, or a state-by-state form of the same, could help assist with keeping lower paid families afloat.

Second, free education. A big hurdle in finding the skills to get a new job comes from the very beginning step, receiving training. Very few skilled jobs provide on-site career training these days, as the modern concept of a career is generally threatened by technology daily. For those jobs that will still need human interaction, training must be flexible, adaptable to the needs of the human being. After all, we are not computers. Trying to retool the human brain can be a challenging task, especially if you’re already balancing a stressful situation in life. (Poverty is certainly one of those conditions that adds plenty of stress.) The cheapest solution overall would likely be to make a computer database of educational materials, let people research what they want to research, have councilors that can guide people towards career skills that are needed, and then test them on some of the information found there. A mixture of hands-on training will also be needed however, especially for more manual dexterity-related skills.

Probably won’t get into a ton of detail on these next two, mostly because it’s now 7am and I should’ve been asleep long ago. But my brain has been racing. I can always cover them in another post.

Three is financial institution reform. Basically, Wall Street reforms. A long needed overhaul to some of these games that are played purely to inflate numbers.

Four will be welfare reform. As I’ve stated before, I’d much rather see a basic income in place, as it allows for a lot more freedom to choose, the ability for people to use the market to meet their needs instead of using government-issued vouchers and programs in exchange for things. With less overhead. It also encourages streamlining of, not only government, but businesses, with the added goal of making it possible for technological unemployment to be a good thing.

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ampillion · 10 years

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Basic Income: How and Why Pay For It?

So, my goal here isn't to get too specifically numbers heavy. We can get into the real specifics of how we'd pay for these sorts of things (except others have done them better), but the goal of this writing exercise is more to explain why and how in a general sense. It is a discussion of the concepts behind how to pay for them, some pros and cons for each, as well as why, people overall, should be willing to pay into this system in the first place.

Firstly, the idea of the Guaranteed Basic Income has no real set in stone numerical goals in any particular categories, outside of defeating poverty from a logistical standpoint. Numbers float around throughout these sorts of discussions all the time, and many suggest anywhere from an easily obtainable $5k, to a harder to come by $15k or more. Logically, the larger the number, the more likelihood of having to draw from an increase in taxes. As the above link indicated, we could readily cut out more wasteful programs and subsidies from government roles and distribute that money directly to the people, even without any tax changes, and still manage to fight poverty to an extent. However, subsistence itself isn't really the intended goal of the Basic Income; it should strive to enable people to thrive and have at least basic comforts, as well as aim to aid in entrepreneurial goals. After all, the Basic Income that supports at least a decent lifestyle enables a lot more streamlining of systems than a bare bones one.

So let's say we take the 5k plan as listed above. Easy to access, easy to redistribute already spent or budgeted money, overall better for people than current welfare programs. The problem becomes however, that we have not fixed the likelihood of removing government bloat, administrative bureaucracy, or 'do nothing' jobs, nor have we provided enough for people, outside of extenuating circumstances, to truly better themselves. Give a homeless man 5k, and he may be able to find a one room apartment somewhere. He may be able to eat. That does not fix his problems any more than the current welfare system does. It does not enable him to do much more, if jobs and opportunities are limited. For people to be business creators, to be able to create or sell things, they need to have capital to invest in raw goods. At a 5k level, we may better some things, but the overall social mobility would not change much, and our goal of 'trimming the fat' would be much more difficult.

At a higher level, 10 or 15k, we can see benefits more greatly reflecting on more 'options' for people as a general rule. Let's say that homeless person now gets 10k. He can now very likely find a small apartment in many suburban areas, and he can now afford at least a decent diet, if all he did was spend money to subsist. I would submit however that most human beings would go terribly mad from doing nothing but subsisting, and many want to go out and do things. Be social, interact with others, create memories. Now, at the 10k level, one person living alone would not have a ton of expendable cash, especially for anyone living near an urban center of any sort, but they would at least have access to 'things' to do. Libraries, public parks, museums, aquariums, etc. Some may find this as 'enough', but again, the majority of people would likely not be so easily tied down to an area, nor be content with such a lifestyle for very long. After all, this is a rather big country, and most of these estimates do not take into consideration the cost of things like transportation. So, for cities that do not have decent mass-transit, 10k is not terribly mobilizing. It does, however, still enable access to resources that could be used to better mobilize capital, better one's own position through direct effort translation into capital, than the smaller 5k could. Having unfettered internet access, and even one's own personal device to work from, alone could enable much more self-education.

At 15k, more money could be spent on 'wants' beyond basic needs, or in general, more resources that could be used to better mobilize oneself, as well as allow for more stability in locations, or a prevention of suburban sprawl, to occur. Ultimately, while this might be the better end of things, it would have the hardest 'sell' to people in general. To get to 10k, we'd already need to do a change in taxation, to get to 15k, we'd likely see higher taxes across the board. How high exactly? I haven't done the math, but the cost to give that much to every person in the US right now would be $4.7 trillion, and we'd fall well short of that with current low taxation rates. (Just for comparison, there was $13.4 trillion in income in 2012.) In general, the UBI would require a change in taxation policy anyway, a simplification in the way things are handled, and a closure of loopholes and benefits. While that might cost the middle class, the estimates would suggest that they would benefit more from the UBI increase than the tax reductions, and thus would be better off even if they were paying more in taxes (as the money received from the UBI would more than offset the taxes paid.)

Here's more the point: At the 10k to 15k levels, you're increasing the ability for people to spend beyond basic needs. This in turn creates more demand for products beyond staple goods, which are at generally low prices already from a demand to drive prices downwards due to economic pressures, innovation, efficiency, and distribution. Food inflation would be temporary, or artificially driven, as logistically there should already be enough food out there in the US to feed every person. Whether or not that's being done is an inefficiency in our system of distribution, unless we are truly not generally enough caloric intake for the current population. We currently distribute purely through exchanges of capital, but this is clearly inefficient, as we do not have enough jobs for everyone, we have homeless and hungry, and we have food going to waste and housing sitting empty. Rather, it is not the most efficient means. Simply giving people money would rather directly fix those problems, and ultimately, would create new opportunities, more demand for goods and services, that do not exist now due to lack of capital in the hands of those who spend the largest percentages of it. So at 5k, you're not likely to stimulate a large growth of new jobs or new services that would be sorely needed or would not be covered by already existing options. Property values would make it difficult to make truly affordable, ultra-efficient apartments that would service people in the 5k price bracket, with today's technology. We're talking $416 dollars a month, so if you want that 5k to be useful for mobility purposes, you'd need to drive the price of rent down to roughly 200 a month. That would likely be improbable to happen in any urban location, and even more rural prices are not likely to get that low. Even so, the lack of concentration of services in rural areas would make it more difficult to access them, or more costly to do so.

More income would increase demand on better quality foods. It would, in turn, allow for an increase of prices to create better quality standards, more humane treatment for animals, and help strengthen our food supply overall. Instead of things being entirely dependent on factory operations to drive prices downwards at the cost of quality, health, or environment and sustainability, we could decentralize some food creation processes, by making suburban and urban farming more a reality, without the mess or requirement of large spreads of cheap land to make the most 'efficient' farming space.

With the increased UBI, we would see much more ability to downsize, to automate, and make things more efficient. While taxes would increase on those making more money, the overhead costs of employing labor would decrease with the lack of need of things like unemployment insurance. The demand for goods and services would likely increase, resulting in higher sales (at least for those businesses whose current levels of demand are being depressed ultimately by lack of demand) and the overall return on automation systems would become more worthwhile. Investments in these systems would turn profitability by downsizing labor pools for more efficient systems.into a sustainable practice, as those removed from now unwanted jobs would still have enough disposable income to purchase goods beyond the staple or inelastic. This in turn, continues to stimulate technology markets, and continues to steer efficiency into profitability, without the 'hang ups' of people needing employment to pay for your goods and services. As automation continues to lower costs, prices as well would equally have to drop, as competition to drive prices down and sustain profits would result in that 10k or 15k going farther.

As well, people could afford not only to work less, but to work for less than what we consider minimum wage now. At the same time, workers would have greater leverage than ever, in being able to reject low or unreasonable wages for particular job roles, while those that continue to work in current roles that would be harder to automate or are vital to general services in the society as a whole, would likely see increases in pay, as the money saved in automation and removal of unnecessary work force are more evenly distributed throughout the remaining workers. Social problems like homelessness, elderly care, mental health and disability would all receive boons by having more access to volunteers, more accommodating families, more available services than before. It would be a proper social safety net that would encourage humans to treat others as equals, as actual humans, rather than competitors for resources, for jobs.

Once jobs are removed as a required resource for survival, you can then start to weed through job titles, job roles, that are unnecessary and start to trim the fat, without any greater concern to that person's well being or the health of the economy. After all, any person should be more than capable to live on 15k a year in the United States. If someone has been making 75k a year at a job deemed wholly unnecessary, that person would likely have to look at taking a downgrade in pay more in line with the actual efficiency or service they provide. This would more likely happen in public sector jobs than private, but overall, profitability from trimming unnecessary administrative bloat would likely occur throughout the industry, as businesses try to find the best ways to operate the most efficiently, regardless of who's employed. Those that find themselves unemployed after these sorts of downsizings, still have the security of the UBI to live off of, thus trying to constantly grow employment even in the face of jobless recovery is no longer of the utmost importance. Again, many services would likely already cover many demands of those who would find themselves with an extra 10k+ in their pockets every year, and where those demands are not met, opportunities for small business would arise.

As well, we'd likely see more investment in personal efficiency. The adoption of things like solar or alternative energy generation, cleaner car concepts, better improvement in home heating/cooling/lighting would be easier for the majority of people if they had more disposable income. Preservation of environment would be much more possible if more and more people could avoid 'the cheapest option' when it comes to non-essentials, such as lighting. People would have money to better adapt current housing to make use of natural lighting better, or renovate older model homes into much more energy efficient designs piece by piece. Electric cars would become a much more viable option for those looking for a new car.

Generally, taxation would have to change in order to fund higher UBI levels. For the most part, there's two schools of thought, a flat tax and a progressive tax. A flat tax is usually considered more easily obtained, but is more regressive compared to the progressive tax, as taxes at the lower end of the income pool would be significantly greater a percentage of effective wealth than the same of a wealthy individual. While 40% of $2 million is indeed larger than that of 20k, that person who is only netting 12k is ultimately being penalized more than the person coming out of it with 1.2 million. Of course, if said person at 20k is receiving a 15k UBI, then they are ultimately ending up with 27k, making the incentive to work still there, but not quite as strong as it were with a more progressive scale. As we already have a somewhat progressive system, not a lot would change asides the percentiles at where taxes are increased, except now we would also be able to more effectively tax any income beyond the UBI, since people working above it would be considered above the poverty line. Hence, the progressive system would better encourage work than the flat tax would, while everybody working would be paying into the system overall.

Next time around, I'll discuss some of the most common points I hear against the concept of a Basic Income (such as the dreaded work incentive), and why some of them are flawed, which may have some actual integrity, and concerns about the system overall.

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ampillion · 10 years

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Why Basic Income: Socially Beneficial

It would be hard not to look around on news sites, paper articles, and even full-fledged books and find studies about things that poverty affects negatively. From human relationships and health, to educational standards and the ability to absorb knowledge, to things like drug abuse and crime, poverty is by far the greatest problem with society as a whole, in many societies overall. Many issues stem directly or indirectly from poverty, and yet, we act as if poverty is this impossible problem to tackle. The fact that we have it in what is touted as the 'richest' country on Earth means we've ultimately failed, as a society, to fix the biggest issue that's ever plagued mankind, at the expense of our humanity and our values, at the pursuit of the dollar.

Except, in this country, it isn't that we don't have enough resources. Resources are plentiful when it comes to food (food quality might be more questionable, but that's a different tale) and housing. Yet we have homeless people in most cities, and we waste roughly 40% of our food produced through various inefficiencies and poor distribution methods. We rely on charity to fund too many of these social motivators, these outcomes that have been created purely from the system we live in. While charities can be nice, they can also be scams. They can also be less efficient than private enterprise or government workings due to the amount of money they have access to. Think about how difficult it would be for a charity to start up to get homeless people in shelters and housing: Land prices, and housing prices, would make it difficult to get people into those houses without some sort of outside assistance, like cheap access to land and labor to create housing upon and with. If they don't end up with the ownership of the land itself, then it likely becomes out of reach for such a project. Religious charities have the benefits of not paying taxes on a lot of such things, and thus they can get more bang for their buck, but ultimately this means relying heavily on religious charities, which might in turn just have the same problems as other charities, with the added baggage of religious rules, intolerances, and politics that might clash with donators or recipients.

Charities also work best when people have excess. People are more likely to chip in a few bucks to charities when they don't have as many obligations themselves, and while even the poorest of the poor may kick in a few coins now and then, there's not enough spare change among the poorest people in this country to tackle the biggest problems. Such as poverty. No matter how many nickles and dimes you pick up from the millions of folks that collect below 30k a year (which is something along the lines of 53% of the people that work in the US currently) you'd never get enough to really address the problem. Charities themselves are much more efficient on a local standpoint, on running a food kitchen, or distributing winter clothes, these sorts of things. When you spread that out into a nationwide effort (or indeed, a global effort), you lose the efficiency of money. You need to collect more and more just to pay for the overhead of your distribution network, of your employees, of property. Ultimately you then need to start paying into advertisement just to get your name out there into the public forums so people have your name in mind when it comes to charities. While it might pay off, that's just more expenditure that's going into things beyond the scope of the charity itself.

How many charities try to tackle the problem of poverty? I would say few. Most aim to treat the symptoms, be it joblesness, food, water, homelessness, substance or familial abuse, clothing and so on. Very few can hope to encompass the scope of something that's been inherent in our system, in our country, since its inception. You can say we live in a land of opportunity all you want, and while it is true, there are opportunities, there are not enough opportunities for all. Currently, there's not even enough jobs for all, if one goes by the 3-to-1 ratio of unemployed persons to job openings. The scope of this isn't to get into the cause of these problems (both capitalism and the government are to blame in some measure), the concept is to move beyond the idea that work should translate directly into survival, in a country where we have resources enough for everybody to have said survival and still have the ability to capitalize on successful ideas, hard work and good business practices. Basic Income would achieve that far better than current welfare systems would, better than raw capitalism can. Especially in the face of automation and busy work. With less government oversight, less bureaucratic bloat, and less interference from businesses trying to directly receive benefits (such as tax relief, building permits, exemptions from regulations) in exchange for jobs. Jobs, and in turn, a human's right to exist and subsist in this country, would no longer be a bargaining chip.

Let's not overlook all the other benefits this would have. Inner-city crime, and property crime in general would decrease. Why would anyone risk their freedom or their life, to try and take from someone else, when everyone has access to needs? Calls on gun control would drop, because we'd be less likely to have as much violent crime in a society where people's needs are met (asides health care, but that's another topic that goes hand in hand with basic income.) The concept of debt itself would slowly fade from the consciousness of society, as one wouldn't need to 'qualify' for something that may be wholly needed (housing loans, car loans, small business loans), but instead such opportunities would be merely a matter of time for even those who could not find work. For those who would still find actual, needed employment, those needs would only be met quicker, and more of their money would be used for 'wants'. For luxuries, for traveling or vacations. Nor would anyone need to take on debt just for actual needs like groceries or housing.

Relationships would be stronger overall, as financial stresses would be eliminated as being a threat to working out a connection between human beings. When we have to weigh in things like monetary situation into a relationship, we ultimately impose a huge amount of stress to human lives. We'll end up with a stagnating population growth, because people will be too afraid to have kids when they have no financial security, and we'll have people constantly needing to retrain to keep up with skill sets that may or may not be automated away, or that might drop in demand as more and more switch to them to find jobs. We then criticize things like poor parenting skills, poor housekeeping skills, when we impose more requirements for time from them to maintain a family. After all, we see a lot more multiple-income families now than ever, and it makes it rather difficult to both spend a lot of time working and still have time and energy to be a good parent, make dinner, and keep the house clean. I would suspect that fewer people would really need to have a two income household if basic needs were properly met, which would allow for more time spent with family, or rather, more energy spent with family. Ultimately this would lead to less cases of child abuse, better educational absorption at home, fewer instances of things like abortion or divorce, all because a huge weight is lifted off people's shoulders.

Social work as a whole would flourish. People as a whole would have more money to spend on things like resources for elderly care, special needs care, or disability care. Volunteerism would have much better prospects at finding folks willing to work for free for a common cause, a greater good, when they don't need to worry about a meal and a roof over their heads. Anxiety levels would drop. People would have much more creative freedom, much more ability to design and create things that could not be created today due to the stifling way society currently works to put a value on everything. I don't simply mean more bad artwork or attempts to pass things off as art, but more folk art, more personal creations like furniture, clothing, blankets, things of actual sentimental value that could be passed down from generation to generation that mean something, much more than the value of the object in dollars. We have so much of a drive to make things cheaper nowadays to make them more accessible, but none of that cheap house furnishings has any longevity to it. It is destined (sometimes designed) to be trashed in a dozen years. As opposed to a solid bookcase, a well-made quilt or pair of socks, While automated goods, or factory goods, may have use, they will rarely have as much sentimental value as something lovingly handcrafted, and a lot of those skills have been left to rot because they're not as highly valued in today's 'money is everything' society.

Society's supposed to enrich the lives of people as a whole, but when we demand compensation for everything, every transaction, every interaction, or even just as a barrier to entry, we ultimately put weight on the shoulders of those who cannot provide in the current environment, while imposing barriers on things like property rights and regulation that might prevent people from actively being able to be self sufficient without society as a whole. This isn't a knock on conservation efforts, after all, if everyone could just take from the environment at will, we'd decimate the country and its living resources at a rapid pace if humanity as a whole were left unchecked. Rather, society should be stepping up to make sure that we can not only all survive, but thrive without having to rely on wilderness, without having to make direct impacts on nature itself to sustain ourselves. We can already technically feed everyone in the country with what we make now, we just fail to due to poor distribution, poor access to consumption.

One of the biggest knocks against the UBI is that it will somehow deincentivize work. There is some suggestion that millions will simply quit working their jobs and simply live off the UBI. Will some quit? Certainly. What is the likelihood that someone leaves a decent paying job, something that we require as part of an every day necessity, or that drives innovative developments or scientific progress? Very unlikely if those positions are actually paying people what they're worth. So, then, what positions are we really losing? Low paid retail jobs? Day laborers? We would only be losing people who were ultimately not contributing much to society in general asides their consumption of goods, and they'll still be consuming some goods even via the UBI. The income's meant for security from starvation and homelessness, and some self betterment. It will not contribute to anyone living the life of luxury without working a day at current prices of goods. Anyone who still works will again, still have more access to resources than anyone who doesn't work, and more people having more disposable income, means more access to self employment opportunities. Ultimately, this incentivizes work by being able to more directly capitalize on your own efforts, as you will always have a safety net behind you to keep you from destitution. Meaning less stress, more energy, better health overall that can be poured into an idea (as well as a little bit of start up cash to help you get things started.) At first, the quality of those things that are put out will certainly be quite varied, after all... when was the last time we really had an artistic or creative revolution in this country? I suppose you could say we have that now using the internet and things like youtube, music and art programs, and creating various distribution models for it, and we do indeed have problems with quality. Quality would improve most certainly if people could put more energy into those works, and in turn, people would be better rewarded for their increase in quality. You might say that things like this 'don't produce anything', but I don't think anyone would want to live in a world with only the most mass-produced pop music, hollywood-produced romcons and action trash, the most sensationalistic or propaganda-laden news. Art, history, nature, science and humanity are what make the world interesting to live in. When you hurt all of those things, what are you leaving for the next generation to live in?

Now, these things do exist now, and sure people can still succeed at both working, bettering themselves, saving cash to create one's own business or financial security, and raising a family... but ultimately, you're asking a lot from two people, and not everyone has a 'safety net' in family that they can rely on to help them start that all off on the best foot. What then is the price of failure? People starving and homeless? Failure in relationships? Kids not learning and educational dollars and efforts wasted? All because there is no guarantees, there is no security, and financial stress bleeds over into many of life's other challenges. While you might believe the saying that 'life isn't fair', that is only because us as humans have decided to make it unfair. We came together to form societies to defeat the challenges of survival out in the harsh wilderness, and we've accomplished that fairly well. When greed starts to play a part in the drive of those societies, you may end up with progress (in the case of capitalistic expansion), but you will most definitely end up with unnecessary human suffering, unless someone makes sure there's a safety net to catch those that cannot succeed, or try and fail. Do you then punish someone who did try and fail just as much as someone who never tried? Indeed, you would want those people with that entrepreneurial spirit to be able to readily rebound, to be able to come to the table with new ideas, and not only write them down, but see them come to fruition. Yet, in a capitalistic society with no nets, one failure is sometimes all it takes to knock you off into homelessness, or deposit you into the arms of a welfare system that does nothing to move you from the system. (Provided you even qualify.) If you have no capital to begin with? Then you risk taking great personal risks in stretching far beyond one's own reach to create something that may ultimately fail. You then dissuade people to even try, beyond those who cannot even qualify to take on loans to try in the first place.

In reality, the only ones that have the ability to really create a nation-wide program that would effectively eliminate poverty would be government or the biggest of the big businesses, or a unified front of religious charities and organizations. I'm going to assume that businesses won't willingly give up profits or CEO and shareholder profits for the betterment of society, nor do I assume that churches would put aside their denominational biases to come together and help all people, so I can only see the government being actually capable of doing so. The best part is? We could probably afford a universal basic income with only a small bit of tax changes as far as rates go. Will the rich end up paying more? I don't think there's much way to avoid it, but at the same time, there's not much likelihood that they'll be taxed entirely out of their wealth brackets (especially with progressive taxes, but more about that when I discuss actually paying for a UBI), and the differences between 50 and 100 million in income are somewhat trivial compared to the differences between 10k and 25k in income. I'll get more into that when I type something up in the whole financial aspect of the UBI. Keep in mind though, we'd be gutting a lot of things such as the need for food stamps, the need for welfare and housing projects. There'd be no need for social security. We'd have a smaller government in simply distributing money out to every citizen, instead of 'employing' several thousands to man bureaucracy. Once you establish a security net? Then we can cut the fat in other places, other areas of government and private businesses. We would no longer require jobs to live, or to have consumers, thus cutting jobs in public sector, and layoffs in private sectors, wouldn't be seen as a huge concern anymore. The more jobs we'd eliminate from the public sector, the less those taxes would be needed to fund the UBI. Ultimately, the only way to really trim out the 'bloat' of government, would be a guaranteed income. Otherwise, you are effectively either keeping someone employed without need for them, or you are cutting thousands of workers without any actual creation of jobs (which we've been short of since WWII) off to ultimately try and compete for the limited income avenues available to them. Creating more competition, and driving wages down further, while dooming more folks to be reliant on welfare.

Which is why I continue to champion the idea of the Basic Income Guarantee. Anything that has a chance of eliminating poverty, providing the opportunity for people to effectively learn, and contribute to a better society as a whole while diminishing government power should have everyone's vote.

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ampillion · 10 years

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Snowballing for the Future: Basic Income Guarantee

As I said, this is mostly here to get me to jumpstart typing out ideas and continue with a writing project I've got going on. It can be difficult some days to find the motivation to just sit down and type, but a little bit of political ranting can get my fingers moving at the very least.

So, this is going to be one of my starting points here. I believe wholeheartedly in the Basic Income idea, and here's why: Someone just the other day in another discussion about income inequality said it better than I could. They had stated that 'Capitalism can't handle large amounts of surplus goods, or large pools of labor very well. It works well when there is a certain level of unemployment, but outside of these levels, it does poorly at handling the needs of people as a whole.'

That isn't to say I'm entirely down on Capitalism, it does do a good job of spurring creativity, and rewarding success. The way I see it however, it does not spur productivity. At a point, there's no longer room in a market. Things can change, and new products can enter said market, or change the product that's being offered, but ultimately one won't be able to make the kind of investment in a product line to directly compete with several already established brands without a real innovation. The innovation that is most common in recent trends, is simply low prices. Low prices are good, when it comes from a change in manufacturing technology, or a new efficient design. When it comes from underpaying labor, exploiting cheaper labor markets, the additional 'savings', or the profits made off of such, come with the expectation that more and more competitors are going to do likewise to keep up. Not a big deal if only a handful change to this strategy, but what happens if the vast majority of manufacturing is all lost to other countries? You have what we have now: A lack of low skill jobs that pay a decent wage, and no long term solution to the unemployment or underemployment. The other issue you get, when there's a lack of innovation, or just no room to innovate, is financial 'products', or ways to generate money that do not rely on production itself, but on things like speculation on performance of stocks and commodities or the creation of toxic or risky assets that lean heavily on debt or credit.

Now, for me, I don't ultimately mind this 'loss of work'. I mourn more the workers in those foreign countries that will deal with the same sorts of things we grew out of; deplorable working conditions, long hours, and low pay. China's already starting to see the very real cost of their unregulated growth, in an increasingly massive housing price bubble and a devastating toll on the environment.

Indeed, I revel in the concept of work disappearing, because we cling to work as this holy, moral act. Let's not take this the wrong way. I'm not against work. I'm against work for work's sake. Currently, we're sitting on a boiling point, between low skilled jobs that pay little, achieve little, and have little future for the individual, and automation (and skilled jobs that ultimately work towards these goals.) There is no glorious retail career. At best, you become management, and you trade problems with dealing with the public with problems dealing with other employees, or corporate policies, or logistics. Does the pay increase? Sure, but with it usually comes with an increase of demand on the individual, more hours, 'salaried' pay, unexpected traveling or sudden crunches, and the whole of the Holiday season simply adds more stress onto a plate that might already be dealing with personal problems. Loneliness, family squabbles, handling gift-giving and purchasing for loved ones, organizing family gatherings or preparing for such. Let's not forget that's on top of the usual family stresses, and the real possibility nowadays that more and more households rely on two working individuals.

Where am I going with all this? Let's look at it one way: What happens if we get rid of all the unnecessary jobs that we have out there? Retail-wise, you could literally run a whole retail brick-and-mortar store with a small fraction of the people that currently work in one. All it takes is things like self-checkout, RFID tagged barcodes and personal shopping accounts or cards tied to credit/debit accounts. Stocking could all be done by robotics, with automated devices reading preset marks on floors between aisles, or shelving designed to be wheeled into backroom 'bays' where stock is replenished. The majority of the jobs in the retail stores revolve around metaphorically refilling a PEZ dispenser. Being someone who's worked that sort of job before, there's no glory in doing something that you feel could easily be done by machine, or replaced by a computer system. Working on a machine, fixing a mechanical problem at least has the benefit of making you feel like you've accomplished something. You've taken a thing that's broken and fixed it. It didn't simply run out of paper, or money, or product. Of course, some machinery or devices have gotten to the point that it becomes cheaper to simply replace than repair, or are modular enough that extra parts are simply there ready to be plugged into place, but those jobs still require a bit of skill in identifying the source problem. Of course, what happens when the machine can deploy a machine that identifies and replaces those parts themselves?

Automation isn't a bad thing. We've used it for ages to develop more and more leisure time for ourselves in the home. It was an inevitability that automation would be used more and more in the workplace. After all, the best way to streamline a revenue source is to make it as efficient as possible. At a certain point, machines, robots and computers become more efficient than the human doing a particular task. The only reason we don't replace them? Well...

Politically, there's no system in place to really handle a glut loss of jobs. We're already seeing politicians trying to strike and gut what welfare systems we have in place. Replacing jobs that probably don't need to be done by people wouldn't be an issue at all, if people weren't for some reason convinced that welfare, or socialism-based concepts, were inherently bad. Of course, a lot of these things likely stem from a dissemination of bad information, but we seem to pride ourselves sometimes on a lack of critical thinking skills. Tack to it that a lot of the jobs that would be cut would be in lower-end stores already, where people are probably going now to buy necessities, staples at the lowest cost. What happens when you start cutting the jobs of the very people that're your main demographics? Hell, what would happen if the majority of retail jobs were lost? Right now, they comprise a lot more of our overall job total than any other category.

Ultimately, automation will lead to a change in economic dynamics. The number of skilled jobs may increase, but the total number of jobs will continue to decrease overall, while the population continues to increase (though that too may start to change.) As more job categories are altogether nixed by machines, what do we do with the populace? Do we try to retrain everybody? After all, it isn't likely that we can convert 100 retail workers into 100 computer programmers or technicians, and we can't simply assume the vast majority of people working on the lower end of the scale of income are just working these jobs as temporary steps towards more permanent, higher paying careers. There just isn't that many positions for everyone, especially at higher pay grades. Jobs are automated away to create wealth through productivity and a reduction in labor costs, not to create more, higher paying jobs.

Which is where the Basic Income Guarantee comes in. (Do a little research on it, and it should make some sense as to why this is probably our best opportunity at the 'next step' beyond basic Capitalism.) I'll probably go on about it a bit more next time around, as I feel I've already rambled a bit too much here. My goal's to use this to spur writing, not to spout out a whole novel and wear out my typing muscles before they get burnt out for the night!

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