Basic income

[AleksM]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

So, people could satisfy their lower needs and focus more on higher needs.

What do you think about basic income?

[Leo Gura]

@AleksM The big question is, who you gonna tax to fund it?

[Apparition of Jack]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@AleksM The big question is, who you gonna tax to fund it?

Billionaires and multi-national corporations? Also you could put taxes on luxury goods like sports cars, French wine, yachts, etc.

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Billionaires and multi-national corporations?

Sounds nice in theory but they will lobby against it and smear you as a communist welfare queen.

[Socrates]

Replace all basic level jobs a monkey could do with machines.

Instead of saving the salary, a really high percentage (70% to 90%) of the salary you used to give to the person that did the job goes as tax to the government.

This way it's win-win for both government and company.

[Dwarniel]

"Utopia for realists" is a really cool book on universal basic income! You should read it

Edited August 15, 2019 by Dwarniel

[AleksM]

@Leo Gura

 

[Bodigger]

1 hour ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Billionaires and multi-national corporations?

In other words, the people.

[Odysseus]

We should integrate BI before a lot of people loose their robotic jobs due to the rise of new technolgies. If not we'll run into a worldwide crisis, because so many people will loose their jobs. IMO the encouragement of human creativity in general, espacially established in education is mandatory to avoid this crisis. People have to start going new ways in order to have jobs in the future. A monthly payment of 1000$/€ could be a savety net for people to start educating themselves. In e.g. Germany this payment could be easily funded by higher financial transaction taxes. Proportionate taxes for millionaires, billionaires and big companies are also good ways. 

53 minutes ago, Bodigger said:

In other words, the people.

Yeah, 0.00001% of the people.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Odysseus

[Rilles]

We have whats called Child Allowance in Sweden. It works great. Paid through taxes and noone really thinks about it. Its about a 100$. Up it a little bit, include every citizien and you have something like UBI. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Rilles

[Bodigger]

1 hour ago, Odysseus said:

Yeah, 0.00001% of the people.

100%

I don't think millionaires, billionaires are in it to make less money and they won't.  What ever you take away from them, they will make up the difference by charging us more.

[Apparition of Jack]

17 minutes ago, Bodigger said:

100%

I don't think millionaires, billionaires are in it to make less money and they won't.  What ever you take away from them, they will make up the difference by charging us more.

Billionaires and millionaires for the most part already don't actually produce the things we buy, they just control the means of distribution, and as a result are able to fuck us in the ass by suffocating any real alternatives to their business models. As a result taxing them more actually barely has an impact on the cost to produce goods, so from a market market POV doing so causes very little reason to jack up prices. From a billionaire's ego POV though, they can threaten to price-gauge you because they want to continue to earn relentless profits, but then you can just pass legislation to prevent such toxic practices. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Apparition of Jack

[Forestluv]

20 minutes ago, Bodigger said:

I  don't think millionaires, billionaires are in it to make less money and they won't.  What ever you take away from them, they will make up the difference by charging us more.

And that is where ethics enters regarding personal gain, corporate toxicity and public wellness. E.g. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. His behavior was certainly profitable for him at a personal level, yet was harmful at the societal level.

[Bodigger]

1 minute ago, Serotoninluv said:

And that is where ethics enters. E.g. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. 

I would agree.  This will take place in time but we need to have patience and work at it.  IMO, Implementing BI too soon would not be good for the collective.

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, Bodigger said:

I would agree.  This will take place in time but we need to have patience and work at it.  IMO, Implementing BI too soon would not be good for the collective.

I’m not addressing you personally here. These are general observation of social dynamics.

The above sentiment could come from someone at Green/Yellow trying to pull Orange up to Green. Or it could come from Orange resisting Green and trying to maintain Orange. These two positions are very different orientations driven by different values and desires. 

The Green/Yellow person may see the collective good in BI, yet may realize that it may not be practical to implement and there may be unintended negative consequences. The key here is that Green/Yellow  values that collective goodness and will advocate for it. Such a person will want things to progress and offer ideas to keep the progress going. For example, they may see some drawbacks in the structure of BI and offer some ways we could modify it to address those concerns and make the proposal more efficient. For example, if BI is funded by rerouting social security funding - it could make both BI and social security programs vulnerable to future dismantling (since social security has much deeper infrastructure). If both B1 and social security was lost, this would not be good for the collective. We may say in this context that the current BI proposal is not good for the collective - yet let’s re-work it to address this concern. Or, a Green/Yellow may say that the most important here is the underlying value of meeting basic needs, yet BI is not the best way and offer other another option to achieve this goal. 

Orange will have a very different orientation. An Orange person may see the collective good in BI, yet not want to move in that direction because they are anchored in Orange. Similar to Green/Yellow, they may voice support for the underlying intention of the proposal and voice “concerns” about how it’s not practical or it will have unintended consequences. Yet Orange will not want to progress, so they will not offer energy and ideas to progress. Rather, they will delay, stonewall, drag their feet, undercut and make excuses. For example, over the last six years, the workforce at my job has gone from 150 years of being 90% upper-class white to being highly diverse - ethnically, socially and economically. This is had positives for the image and economics of the institution -  which is attractive to Orange administrators. The problem is that the administrators are still all upper-class straight white men. There is a lot of grass roots Green, yet Orange administrators resist. They know they can’t resist by rejecting Green values, so they try to appear supportive of Green. Yet they aren’t. They try to appear as being pragmatic and concerned - yet they keep avoiding, delaying or resisting any new initiative toward progress. And often try to slip in Orange level constructs. Just like conservative Blue has “dog whistles” that Green has awakened to, Orange can speak in “code”, in which Green is awakening to. 

This dynamic can also be seen with corporate Orange Democrat’s resisting progressive Green Democrats. 

[Revolutionary Think]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sounds nice in theory but they will lobby against it and smear you as a communist welfare queen.

Use reverse psychology and call them communists for the 2008 bank bail outs. 

[Revolutionary Think]

14 hours ago, Bodigger said:

What ever you take away from them, they will make up the difference by charging us more.

Make it illegal and arrest those who pass the difference to the customers. Make a way to monitor it as well.

[Leo Gura]

Notice how tricky such things are.

Which is why politics is so messy and dirty.

Don't forget, all politics is survival.

[Revolutionary Think]

Yup all a bunch of mind games. It's not just Politics Politics... it's family politics, community politics, homeowners association politics, and.... even the Politics with in yourself like when you think someone is a jerk when they talk too much but, then you get excited and you talk too much and not even realize you're being just like that other person. It's mirco and macro levels. 

[Leo Gura]

@Revolutionary Think Don't forget Actualized Forum politics