Interesting read at FiveThirtyEight on paying everybody a basic income and scrapping most benefits.

What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?

Basic income is not a single idea but a family of closely related ideas, which go by an assortment of names: universal basic income, unconditional basic income, social dividend, guaranteed annual income, citizen’s income, negative income tax, etc. But the core motivation — to address social ills by just giving people money — has a long history.

Thomas Paine, the intellectual founding father and pamphleteer, outlined a plan in his 1797 essay “Agrarian Justice” to create a national fund making payments of 15 pounds sterling to each adult over 21 years old. In the early 20th century, socialists and labor activists took up the cause, arguing basic income could empower workers and transform economies: British philosopher Bertrand Russell backed it, along with those in the social credit movement in Britain; left-wing Louisiana Gov. Huey Long supported it while pushing to “Share the Wealth.” But basic income never really caught on. In the U.S., the New Deal — which focused on boosting employment through public works projects, expanded workers’ rights and new forms of social assistance like Social Security — was the approach that won out instead.

In the U.S., we’re left with a patchwork benefits system, an indecipherable alphabet soup of programs: SNAP, TANF, CHIP, Section 8, EITC, WIC, SSDI. The U.S. government spends nearly $1 trillion across dozens of separate programs at the state and federal level,2 as this byzantine diagram from the House Ways and Means Committee shows. This all requires enormous administrative oversight on the part of the government, and it requires the ability to navigate multiple agencies on the part of recipients.

Well, it would be nice for me, since at age 46 I quit my job to take care of my mother, and I don't qualify for any existing financial assistance.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

[angry Bill O'Reilly voice] You mean pay people for doing nothin'? They need to earn their pay! That's what's wrong with this country! Too many people are living off the American Government and haven't learned to get up off their butts and do something for themselves! If you don't work, you don't get to eat. It's as simple as that! You want a roof over your head and food on the table and clothes on your back? Then you need to go out and get a job! [/O'Reilly factor]




Note, I don't believe a word of the above, but that is precisely why it won't work in this country.

We already do this with farm subsidies that mostly benefit large agribusiness.

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This old saw again... Likely something similar will be necessary due to job loss due to increasing automation & AI.

My favorite example of it in literature:



Robert A. Heinlein's FIRST novel, written back in 1938 but only published in 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs

At a number of points in For Us, the Living, Heinlein describes an environment in which individuals are able to choose whether or not to accept a job. Passing references are made to the large number of individuals who take up art or other careers that traditionally do not pay well. The book also points out the short working hours and high wages paid to employees. The book ascribes this flexible working environment to the social credit system (the "Dividend") adopted by the United States which provides enough new capital in the economic system to overcome the problems of overproduction while providing a guaranteed minimal income for all members of society.

For Us, the Living also depicts an early example of homesourcing in fiction. The character of Diana, a nationally renowned dancer, is shown performing in her own home for a broadcast audience, which sees her dancing on sets added by the broadcasting company to her original feed. The mechanism for this homesourcing is not described in much technical detail, but it appears to be similar to a high-definition video signal interfaced with something like modern chroma key technology.

The biggest economic impact in the book, however, is Heinlein's Social Credit system, that he takes many pains to explain: the Heritage Check System, an alternative form of government funding, in place of taxation. The heritage check system is a moderately altered Social Credit system. Its modification reflects Heinlein's more libertarian views and Heinlein's interpretation on how financial systems are affected by the relationship between consumption and production.

The system could be construed as a libertarian's approach to a socialist idea, creating an alternative to a tax system that puts fewer requirements on individuals, while simultaneously providing more for the common welfare. This is not too surprising, as Heinlein (a proclaimed libertarian) was also fascinated by Social Credit plan that appeared in Canada (which was later shot down by their Federal Government). In this role, the government becomes less a part of the economy and more a facilitator of it.

A good read, in my opinion.

Likely something similar will be necessary due to job loss due to increasing automation & AI.

They gave a link to that in the article,
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

The two Oxford economists estimated that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs were at risk of computerization.

Likely something similar will be necessary due to job loss due to increasing automation & AI.

They gave a link to that in the article,
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

The two Oxford economists estimated that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs were at risk of computerization.

Its a bit worse than that, I think.

Economic Report of the President, 2016.


https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/ERP_2016_Book_Complete%20JA.pdf

Figure 5-15 on page 239.

Wages given are 2010 median values.

US$20.00/hour and below = 83% chance of being replaced by automation.

US$20.00/hour to US$40.00/hour = 31% chance of being replaced by automation.

Over US$40.00/hour = 4% chance of being replaced by automation.

That's quite disturbing, since in 2010 the median wage in the USA was US$17.40/hour... especially since the traditional fall-back jobs for the low-skill people and the high-skill people going through a rough patch are the ones that will be getting replaced by automation.

That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

Ideas similar to those of Basic Income were also popular in the aftermath of the last great depression, in the mid-1930s. In particular, the Alberta Social Credit Party formed the government of the province of Alberta in Canada from 1935 to 1967. In the early years at least, the Government followed "The basic premise of social credit is that all citizens should be paid a dividend as capital and technology replace labour in production", at least in theory: some of the necessary mechanisms were blocked because the Lieutenant-Governor and the Supreme Court ruled the provincial legislation unconstitutional.

It seems that the concept of 'citizen dividend' or basic income withered in the later years and were replaced by a more 'conventional' oil-based economy.

Since we have an international audience here, I'd be interested to hear to what extent that story is remembered, especially in the western provinces of Canada.

Alberta Social Credit Party

After we get back from town later today I will attempt to
do a bit of a run down on how we feel about this subject.
Also this is a collage course in these parts, and it is a
little messy.
Until then.....

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That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

If most human workers are replaced by machines.

Who will have money to buy, what the machines produce?

Machine Unemployment?

A good example of why Science won't solve all the problems and why capitalism will die as it is today .

The Americans are really going to implode over weather they need some sort of socialism to solve the problems science will create

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Here in Albertastan you can start a fight in any bar in any town
just by standing up and insulting the founder of social credit out
loud. I personally have met farmers who were still paying their
province of Alberta mortgages in the 1970s. When the movement began
it was in response to the upset of the depression. I would suggest
that any one who is sufficiently interested to get their 'Google' on.
The movement and it's subsequent evolution are still a factor in Canadian
politics to this day.
I would love to go on about this but it would of course be ad nauseam.

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That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

If most human workers are replaced by machines.

Who will have money to buy, what the machines produce?

Machine Unemployment?

It's been said before. If you want a solution to the main problems that mankind faces in the near future, global warming, food and water shortages and now job shortages, reduce the population.

It's been said before. If you want a solution to the main problems that mankind faces in the near future, global warming, food and water shortages and now job shortages, reduce the population.

Agreed on global warming and resource shortages (many more than just food and water), but money (currently tied to wages from jobs) is a different kettle of fish.

Money is entirely a human construct. The amount of money we've created has increased far faster than the global population: that's been happening for centuries, as banks lend money that they didn't receive as deposits - long before quantitative easing.

So why are we so short of the stuff?

This mail conversation comes to mind.

Son writes home:

"No money, no honey, not funny.
Love, Sonny."

Father writes back:

"You're mad? So sad. Too bad.
Love, Dad"

That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

If most human workers are replaced by machines.

Who will have money to buy, what the machines produce?

Machine Unemployment?

It's been said before. If you want a solution to the main problems that mankind faces in the near future, global warming, food and water shortages and now job shortages, reduce the population.

WinterKnight...

Yes. Human Overpopulation, is the real problem.

Who will be the first volunteer?

If no volunteers... Who will control the Central Authority making these decisions?

Who said we needed volunteers, or for that matter specified a time span.

That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

If most human workers are replaced by machines.

Who will have money to buy, what the machines produce?

Machine Unemployment?

It's been said before. If you want a solution to the main problems that mankind faces in the near future, global warming, food and water shortages and now job shortages, reduce the population.

WinterKnight...

Yes. Human Overpopulation, is the real problem.

Who will be the first volunteer?

If no volunteers... Who will control the Central Authority making these decisions?

Who said we needed volunteers, or for that matter specified a time span.

So true, I don't think that volunteers are even permitted, and Monsanto can do such wonders with GM crops, who needs a Central Authority to make decisions.

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That's why I said in the Trump thread, that the jobs, the mainly blue collar workers that support Trump want back, will not be coming back. If the industry does come back it will be automated, and they, unless they get more education, are not qualified.

If most human workers are replaced by machines.

Who will have money to buy, what the machines produce?

Machine Unemployment?

It's been said before. If you want a solution to the main problems that mankind faces in the near future, global warming, food and water shortages and now job shortages, reduce the population.

I have been thinking and saying for years that the elephant in the room is overpopulation. But other than war, disease, natural disaster, famine or a combination of the above how does the earth reduce the human population. I'm quite sure we won't do it consciously without help from mother nature. No matter how it is accomplished it won't be pretty.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

So why are we so short of the stuff?

The world is not short of money, it's
just not shared around correctly.

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So why are we so short of the stuff?

The world is not short of money, it's
just not shared around correctly.

True. For instance...
More than $2.10 trillion in profits are U.S. companies holding overseas, according to a Bloomberg News review of the securities filings of 304 corporations.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/u-s-companies-are-stashing-2-1-trillion-overseas-to-avoid-taxes

There are of course other countries as well...