# Basic Income



## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

Are there any threads on this? It sounds like a great idea and I don't think I've seen it being discussed on here, but I'm sure it must have been.

I remember DotCommunist mentioning Citizen's Income a few times. Is this the same thing?

Articles/books on the subject etc are also welcome.

Cheers


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## bi0boy (Mar 17, 2013)

There was this thread, and I seem to remember a much longer and older one, but it might have disappeared.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

Thread was a bit of a mess, tbh. I'm surprised there was negative feeling about it, too. How about we give it another go (unless you find the bigger thread)?

Definition of basic income: a universal payment to every citizen of the country whether they work or not, rich or poor, whatever. It would be set high enough that you could live on this (so a 'living wage'?), paying for housing, food, bills, etc. If you want to work, then you keep your basic income in full, and your wages top it up (subject to the normal deductions and so on). This is how I understand it working from the little I've read on it so far. No other benefits would exist. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Here's why I think it would be good: If there was a BI set at a level that people didn't need to work then obviously a proportion of the country would stop working. I don't see this as a problem. There's not enough jobs to go around at the minute, so this would ease some of the pressure on those who actually want to work by reducing applicants. I would hope that the days of 1500 applicants for coffee shop jobs would be over. Of course there will still be people who want to work in coffee shops and other unskilled jobs. Perhaps just a day or two a week to give themselves a bit more spending money?

One thing that gets mentioned occasionally on here is job sharing. This is currently impractical as most people can't afford to halve their wages, and the employer is not going to pay two people each a salary to do the job that one person can do. With a BI, then anyone could afford to share their job. Job sharing advantages: two people, two perspectives/skill sets; time off can be arranged between the two workers, and you have cover for sickness and when one person leaves. I'm sure there would also be environmental benefits if something like this was widespread like fewer cars on the road.

The minimum wage would be able to be scrapped as there would be no need to do shit jobs for inhumane wages. If a job was truly shit, but essential, then the employer would have to offer a wage sufficient enough to tempt people into it. But that still might end up being a low rate? Who knows. It may be that some jobs don't exist at the minute because nobody would pay someone the minimum wage to do it - perhaps at £2ph it becomes worth it, and someone somewhere wouldn't mind doing the job for that rate. But they'd choose to do it, as they don't need the money, it would just be a bit extra to top up their BI.

I did have some more thoughts on this, but I've taken so long to type this I've forgotten. Will try to remember later on.

Anyone think this is a good idea?
Why are my ideas above wrong?


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## Puddy_Tat (Mar 17, 2013)

the big difficulty (as I think I may have said on the other thread) is the huge variation in housing costs around the country.

When it's possible to get a 3 bed house in an ex pit village somewhere up north for less than you can get a bedsit in much of London for, the whole thing is kinda skewed...


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## 8115 (Mar 17, 2013)

I think it's a great idea but presumably the cost of it is the major disadvantage. Although by eliminating poverty you would save a fair bit.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

Wouldn't there be fewer people wanting to live in London if a BI was in place? I reckon a lot of people are in London because that's where the work is.

Perhaps it would reverse the decline in population and fortunes of some of these pit villages as well. Instead of money and people leaving the communities, there would now be a steady, guaranteed income to every community.


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## yield (Mar 17, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> There was this thread, and I seem to remember a much longer and older one, but it might have disappeared.


There were these two recently as well.
A citizen's wage  

Citizen's wage – a proposal


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

Thanks. This is linked from one of those threads, too: Number-crunching a citizen's wage

Seems like there's been a fair few threads. I better get reading.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> ..............
> Definition of basic income: a universal payment to every citizen of the country whether they work or not, rich or poor, whatever. It would be set high enough that you could live on this (so a 'living wage'?), paying for housing, food, bills, etc. If you want to work, then you keep your basic income in full, and your wages top it up (subject to the normal deductions and so on).
> .....................


It would be a massive amount of money, how would it be raised? / who would fund it?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> It would be a massive amount of money, how would it be raised? / who would fund it?


 
It would be raised through the tax system, and so it would be funded by tax payers.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> It would be raised through the tax system, and so it would be funded by tax payers.


How nice for them, I am sure they will agree !!


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> How nice for them, I am sure they will agree !!


 
Why wouldn't they? It could have enormous benefits for the entire country. And it would save money on the current system by removing the means testing and lots of the administration. It would get the economy going again because everyone would have regular income and so money to spend.

Would you oppose it?


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

removed..... recalculating.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> So, how much is the BI? £16k pa, perhaps more? and how many people in the UK? 65,000,000 give or take, which means 65,000,000 x £16,000 = £ 1,040,000,000,000 which is a trillion pounds a year. Total government spending in 2012 was only £694.89bn so that means those who do pay taxes will have to pay a whole lot more (almost double) than they are paying at the moment. I seriously doubt they will vote for it!


 
I asked if you would oppose it, not if you could guess how others would receive it. I also never mentioned £16k. Nor did I say everyone would receive it (about 18 million people in the UK are children - there's no reason to give children £16k a year).


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I asked if you would oppose it, not if you could guess how others would receive it. I also never mentioned £16k. Nor did I say everyone would receive it (about 18 million people in the UK are children - there's no reason to give children £16k a year).


 
So only adults, that makes a difference. But what is the point in taxing people in work X, but then giving them back Y as a BI ... why not tax them less in the first place?

I just picked £16k out of the air, what level would you set it at?


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## Santino (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> So, how much is the BI? £16k pa, perhaps more? and how many people in the UK? 65,000,000 give or take, which means 65,000,000 x £16,000 = £ 1,040,000,000,000 which is a trillion pounds a year. Total government spending in 2012 was only £694.89bn so that means those who do pay taxes will have to pay a whole lot more (almost double) than they are paying at the moment. I seriously doubt they will vote for it!


You're out of your depth.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Santino said:


> You're out of your depth.


Glad you noticed


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> So only adults, that makes a difference. But what is the point in taxing people in work X, but then giving them back Y as a BI ... why not tax them less in the first place?
> 
> I just picked £16k out of the air, what level would you set it at?


 
It's called wealth redistribution. I don't know what level it would be set at. I don't have the mathematical/economic skills to work something like that out.

Would you oppose it?


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Would you oppose it?


Haven't decided yet.
You haven't really specified many details yet.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> Haven't decided yet.
> You haven't really specified many details yet.


 
Do you understand the concept of an agreement in principle?


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Do you understand the concept of an agreement in principle?


I can accept that there is such a thing.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> I can accept that there is such a thing.


 
Can you troll another thread please?


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Can you troll another thread please?


I don't think asking for further details is trolling.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

I think it's a stupid idea. It would lead to even greater social division, no-one would do the shit jobs, it would create even more massive resentment to those who want to work but can't (strivers vs skivers on steroids) and there's no way we'd ever be able to pay for it. Why bother working if you'd be taxed from the first pound at 50% or whatever it would need to fund it?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> I don't think asking for further details is trolling.


 
Here you go then. The citizen's income trust have done some rough costings on _their_ idea for a BI. You can read read it here (pdf).

After you've read it, will you be able to answer if you would oppose a basic income, _in principle_?


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## 8115 (Mar 17, 2013)

There are a lot of reasons why people work other than just money. Purpose, identity, to have a social network. These reasons would become more important which could be a good thing. Lower paid johs would have to be more pleasant to do.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

ChrisFilter said:


> I think it's a stupid idea. It would lead to even greater social division, no-one would do the shit jobs, it would create even more massive resentment to those who want to work but can't (strivers vs skivers on steroids) and there's no way we'd ever be able to pay for it. Why bother working if you'd be taxed from the first pound at 50% or whatever it would need to fund it?


 
So much wrong in this.

How can someone who wants to work every be classed as a skiver, especially in a society where they don't have to?

Shit jobs will either be necessary, in which case the wages will keep going up until they reach the point that people are willing to put up with the conditions for the remuneration, or they will be unnecessary, and so who cares that no one will do them?

If you work currently, you may find you are only slightly better off than not working. Or perhaps worse off, if you happen to be on a low hour contract. With BI, you can never be worse off, and the more you work, the better off you are. Full stop. Plus you've just invented the fact that you'd be taxed at 50% from the first pound. No implementation for this yet exists, so why criticise an imaginary version of it?


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## yield (Mar 17, 2013)

ChrisFilter said:


> I think it's a stupid idea. It would lead to even greater social division, no-one would do the shit jobs, it would create even more massive resentment to those who want to work but can't (strivers vs skivers on steroids) and there's no way we'd ever be able to pay for it. Why bother working if you'd be taxed from the first pound at 50% or whatever it would need to fund it?


Could you imagine something more worthwhile to go to work for than financial gain?

If all your basic needs were being met food, heating and housing.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Here you go then. The citizen's income trust have done some rough costings on _their_ idea for a BI. You can read read it here (pdf).


 
Thanks for the link. It is interesting, incidentally that pdf says children will receive CI, but the sums are very small. Unless I have misunderstood the pdf .... :

Age Weekly CI
0-17 £34
18-24 £45
25-64 £57
65plus £114

I just don't see how that will let me pay my bills. Unless I have missed something, I am in the 25-64 category which means about £230 a month. My rent alone is £800 plus .....



Fez909 said:


> After you've read it, will you be able to answer if you would oppose a basic income, _in principle_?


 
I don't understand Fez909 why you are so keen to get me to decide for or against. Is it not possible to have an open mind and be interested in the details?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> I don't understand Fez909 why you are so keen to get me to decide for or against. Is it not possible to have an open mind and be interested in the details?


 
Because I started this thread to learn about the BI, not to try to sell the idea to those who would be opposed to the idea on principle. Your insistence on seeing the details makes me think that you are one of those people, and that's why I believe you're trolling.

I knew you would use the figures in that PDF back on this thread, even though I tried to make it clear I don't agree with their numbers, and you did.

So, if you would never support this anyway, regardless what the figures said, why are you here?


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> So much wrong in this.
> 
> How can someone who wants to work every be classed as a skiver, especially in a society where they don't have to?
> 
> ...



People who want to work but can't are already being classed as skivers in the papers, by the govt and, increasingly, by the great British public. 

There would be a massive shortfall in labour for essential services, I'd predict. Unless immigrants were employable but not eligible for the basic income or some variation of that rule thereof. 

Taxes would need to be loads higher, that goes without saying. 50% was an example. 

Why criticise it? Because I thought you wanted people's thoughts. Because it's a discussion forum. I didn't know you just wanted agreement, sorry.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

yield said:


> Could you imagine something more worthwhile to go to work for than financial gain?
> 
> If all your basic needs were being met food, heating and housing.



Personal fulfilment. Volunteering for good causes. To stop the mind numbing boredom that accompanies unemployment.


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Because I started this thread to learn about the BI, not to try to sell the idea to those who would be opposed to the idea on principle. Your insistence on seeing the details makes me think that you are one of those people, and that's why I believe you're trolling.
> 
> I knew you would use the figures in that PDF back on this thread, even though I tried to make it clear I don't agree with their numbers, and you did.
> 
> So, if you would never support this anyway, regardless what the figures said, why are you here?


sod this agreement in principle lark.

let's see the numbers and see how they stack up. That leaflet is useless because it doesn't account for housing benefit, council tax benefit etc, in fact it deliberately ignores them because a citizens income doesn't work when you then have shared household benefits such as housing benefit. If even the proponents of it can't make a rational case for it, then that gives a decent indication of how viable it would be in reality.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

8115 said:


> There are a lot of reasons why people work other than just money. Purpose, identity, to have a social network. These reasons would become more important which could be a good thing. Lower paid johs would have to be more pleasant to do.



Unfortunately the world just isn't that utopian. I get the feeling you're picturing cheerful binmen whistling and hauling rubbish for the bonhomie, but given the strains on the tax system caused by BI the state or local govt run services would be really stretched, so unlikely to be more pleasant.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> ...........
> So, if you would never support this anyway, regardless what the figures said, why are you here?


 
I don't think that is fair. I don't know much at all about the concept which is why I asked for details, I am just trying to understand it. As I am not against benefits in general there should be no reason why I would be against them organised in a different way, if that way makes good sense.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Anyone think this is a good idea?



This is why people are giving you their opinion.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

ChrisFilter said:


> People who want to work but can't are already being classed as skivers in the papers, by the govt and, increasingly, by the great British public.
> 
> There would be a massive shortfall in labour for essential services, I'd predict. Unless immigrants were employable but not eligible for the basic income or some variation of that rule thereof.
> 
> ...


 
There's a difference between not being able to find a job in a society where you have to work, and we're pitted up against each other for the few positions available, and one where working is essentially optional, and there is no divide between those who get money from the state and those who don't. Everyone is now "on benefits".

Immigrants can be granted citizenship, and it happens all the time already. I don't see a fundamental problem there.

Taxes higher, yep. 

I meant why are you attacking a tax system you've just made up in your head, not why are you attacking BI as a concept. The two are distinct.

I'm definitely not here for "just agreement" as I'm still trying to understand the consequences myself.


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## yield (Mar 17, 2013)

ChrisFilter said:


> Personal fulfilment. Volunteering for good causes. To stop the mind numbing boredom that accompanies unemployment.


There are some jobs that'd require such technical expertise that you'd have lifers.

Otherwise you'd be able to do apprenticeships at whatever you like.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> There's a difference between not being able to find a job in a society where you have to work, and we're pitted up against each other for the few positions available, and one where working is essentially optional, and there is no divide between those who get money from the state and those who don't. Everyone is now "on benefits".
> 
> Immigrants can be granted citizenship, and it happens all the time already. I don't see a fundamental problem there.
> 
> ...



If it was open to immigrants you'd have to really nail down immigration policies because a living wage for nothing would be very appealing to people from poverty-stricken countries.


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

actually, I suppose it could work if you had state provided housing for all according to their needs as well, but I can't see how it could work without that without couples being much better off than single people due to savings made from shared housing costs.

Unless you're not actually going to set the levels at levels people can actually live on including housing costs etc, which kinda defeats the purpose.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> sod this agreement in principle lark.
> 
> let's see the numbers and see how they stack up. That leaflet is useless because it doesn't account for housing benefit, council tax benefit etc, in fact it deliberately ignores them because a citizens income doesn't work when you then have shared household benefits such as housing benefit. If even the proponents of it can't make a rational case for it, then that gives a decent indication of how viable it would be in reality.


 
I wouldn't have thought that agreeing that something is a worthwhile thing in principle would be such a controversial thing. If it doesn't even seem like a good idea in principle then why bother number crunching? If you are number crunching, then that's an implicit agreement.

I don't like the citizen's income numbers from the quick glance I've seen. The payments are not high enough and they propose a flat tax. I don't know if anyone else has seriously worked out the costings...?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

ChrisFilter said:


> This is why people are giving you their opinion.


 
Great. That's what I'm after.

Though don't make up a policy and then attack it as if I've proposed it, or it is intrinsic to a BI.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> actually, I suppose it could work if you had state provided housing for all according to their needs as well, .............


 
That would require the nationalisation of housing, all housing no? not really sure that is a goer..


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> actually, I suppose it could work if you had state provided housing for all according to their needs as well, but I can't see how it could work without that without couples being much better off than single people due to savings made from shared housing costs.
> 
> Unless you're not actually going to set the levels at levels people can actually live on including housing costs etc, which kinda defeats the purpose.


 
Yeah, that's pretty complicated. I don't think couples should/would be treated any differently to singles, though. A lot of the savings would come to the reduced bureaucracy in implementing it. If you start investigating who is a couple, etc, you're back to where you were before.

Plus, is it such a bad thing that couples are better off? It's the same as now, except now you don't have the safety net of the BI as a single person.


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I wouldn't have thought that agreeing that something is a worthwhile thing in principle would be such a controversial thing. If it doesn't even seem like a good idea in principle then why bother number crunching? If you are number crunching, then that's an implicit agreement.
> 
> I don't like the citizen's income numbers from the quick glance I've seen. The payments are not high enough and they propose a flat tax. I don't know if anyone else has seriously worked out the costings...?


because in principle some of the stuff IDS was saying on benefits before the election seemed to make some sense, but now we actually see the numbers and exactly what he intended, it's clear that this is not something that I could possibly support.

Not that I believed him before the election, I worked on the assumption it'd just be another way of screwing over everyone on benefits and unfortunately that assumption has proved correct.


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> That would require the nationalisation of housing, all housing no? not really sure that is a goer..


yes, that would seem to be a serious flaw to the plan to me.

Certainly unless we're talking serious 'come the revolution' stuff, but I'm sure some fucking stalinist bastard would have shot me by then for disagreeing with them on something, so I doubt it'd affect me.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> because in principle some of the stuff IDS was saying on benefits before the election seemed to make some sense, but now we actually see the numbers and exactly what he intended, it's clear that this is not something that I could possibly support.
> 
> Not that I believed him before the election, I worked on the assumption it'd just be another way of screwing over everyone on benefits and unfortunately that assumption has proved correct.


 
The Universal Credit might actually reduce administration costs. In that sense it would be a success, and perhaps something to build on for a IB. UC for all, set at the right rate = IB?

The amount that will be paid out on UC will be far below what it should be, but that doesn't mean there weren't savings on the admin side. It is still a means tested benefit, though, so the savings will have been minimal.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> ...... Though don't make up a policy and then attack it as if I've proposed it, or it is intrinsic to a BI.


 
The idea behind "Basic Income" must surely be that someone can live on it alone, reasonably. Does that mean that it should be the same or higher than what people can currently get on benefits?

People continue to get it when they are working, does that mean employers will pay less than they used to in the knowledge their employees are getting the BI? Or will a minimum wage per hour still apply?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

Why would housing have to be nationalised? We already pay benefits for people to rent privately, and there is a cap on the amount that is paid out. Add this to whatever number they calculate for living costs and you have a baseline for the BI rate, surely?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> The idea behind "Basic Income" must surely be that someone can live on it alone, reasonably. Does that mean that it should be the same or higher than what people can currently get on benefits?
> 
> People continue to get it when they are working, does that mean employers will pay less than they used to in the knowledge their employees are getting the BI? Or will a minimum wage per hour still apply?


 
No one has mentioned you have to be able to live alone. There aren't enough houses in the country if everyone wanted to do that.

Yes, it should be more than people get on benefits currently. Benefits are deliberately set below the amount a person needs in order to compel them into employment.

Minimum wage laws could be abolished, I reckon. I mentioned it further up the thread.


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Why would housing have to be nationalised? We already pay benefits for people to rent privately, and there is a cap on the amount that is paid out. Add this to whatever number they calculate for living costs and you have a baseline for the IB rate, surely?


because the reduction in housing benefit is at least as major a component of the benefits trap as JSA.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No one has mentioned you have to be able to live alone. ...............


Sorry, misunderstanding, I meant that people should be able to live on BI on its own.

Although I do think people should still be able to live in suitable housing "on their own".


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> because the reduction in housing benefit is at least as major a component of the benefits trap as JSA.


 
But the reduction in housing benefit is not something set in stone. We're talking about something we'd like to see happen, and whether it is possible. We know it is possible, because the rates used to be set higher. Increase the housing rates again, add living costs, and there's your baseline.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

weltweit said:


> Sorry, misunderstanding, I meant that people should be able to live on BI on its own.
> 
> Although I do think people should still be able to live in suitable housing "on their own".


 
I would say that would be classed as a luxury. Get a part time job and you'd be able to afford it


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> But the reduction in housing benefit is not something set in stone. We're talking about something we'd like to see happen, and whether it is possible. We know it is possible, because the rates used to be set higher. Increase the housing rates again, add living costs, and there's your baseline.


please state your proposal more clearly. What would you suggest happens re housing benefit alongside this basic income suggestion?

I can't have much idea if it's something I'd like to see or not without actually knowing what you're actually suggesting.


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## weltweit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> ..... Get a part time job and you'd be able to afford it


And on that note I had better get back to my job hunting


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> please state your proposal more clearly. What would you suggest happens re housing benefit alongside this basic income suggestion?
> 
> I can't have much idea if it's something I'd like to see or not without actually knowing what you're actually suggesting.


 
All I'm saying is if housing benefit was previously capped at £100* a week, for example, and that was enough for everyone to rent a house, then the BI baseline could be said to be £100* plus whatever figure is calculated as necessary for living costs. Say living costs are calculated to be £100* a week, then BI could be £200*. No need for nationalised housing, because the payment is enough for everyone to rent privately.

*All numbers for explanatory purposes only!


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> All I'm saying is if housing benefit was previously capped at £100* a week, for example, and that was enough for everyone to rent a house, then the BI baseline could be said to be £100* plus whatever figure is calculated as necessary for living costs. Say living costs are calculated to be £100* a week, then BI could be £200*. No need for nationalised housing, because the payment is enough for everyone to rent privately.
> 
> *All numbers for explanatory purposes only!


so no housing benefit then, everyone would just get enough from their basic income allowance to cover housing and all other costs?


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> so no housing benefit then, everyone would just get enough from their basic income allowance to cover housing and all other costs?


 
Yeah!


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## free spirit (Mar 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Yeah!


ok, so say that's an average of £300 per person a week for 50 million people, that's £780 billion a year.

Not that this is necessarily money that can't be found from higher taxes, but it's a lot different to what was being made out in that leaflet.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2013)

free spirit said:


> ok, so say that's an average of £300 per person a week for 50 million people, that's £780 billion a year.
> 
> Not that this is necessarily money that can't be found from higher taxes, but it's a lot different to what was being made out in that leaflet.


 
Yeah, this is just my take on the idea. That leaflet was the only thing I've seen where someone has attempted to cost it.

Currently the benefits bill is about £200bn and the pension bill is about £80bn? So it's more than double what we pay currently (IF it was £300 a week).

But how much would we gain in lowered crime, increased economic productivity, easing up on public services, etc? Maybe we'd make it up, maybe not. It seems like society would be immeasurably better for it, though.


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## ChrisFilter (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Great. That's what I'm after.
> 
> Though don't make up a policy and then attack it as if I've proposed it, or it is intrinsic to a BI.



The policy was a realistic example of the tax structure that would be needed to support this.


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Mar 18, 2013)

It's a nice idea. I agree with FS though that 'agree in principal' is a nonsense without the numbers. And I working out the numbers is much harder than the tries people have had so far because the knock on effects would be huge.

You can't just assume all other things remain the same and then add up the figures because a globalised economy doesn't work like that. I couldn't begin to work it out but as an example one thing you'd be risking would be a massive collapse of exports due to increased costs. How would that affect the tax base that's paying for this? And what about other taxes - say you need to double your tax income, do you double VAT? Well no because then, even ignoring levels of purchasing, you've caused massive inflation and fucked your figures for what people require to live on.

Seems to me you'd be better off looking at some old-style socialist solutions tbh.


----------



## silverfish (Mar 18, 2013)

Not trolling. How is it delivered? Cash weekly? Monthly? Lump sum?

If I get it and spunk the lot, does society still have to safety net me?


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 18, 2013)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> It's a nice idea. I agree with FS though that 'agree in principal' is a nonsense without the numbers. And I working out the numbers is much harder than the tries people have had so far because the knock on effects would be huge.
> 
> You can't just assume all other things remain the same and then add up the figures because a globalised economy doesn't work like that. I couldn't begin to work it out but as an example one thing you'd be risking would be a massive collapse of exports due to increased costs. How would that affect the tax base that's paying for this? And what about other taxes - say you need to double your tax income, do you double VAT? Well no because then, even ignoring levels of purchasing, you've caused massive inflation and fucked your figures for what people require to live on.
> 
> Seems to me you'd be better off looking at some old-style socialist solutions tbh.



No, it's a nonsense to say you need the numbers to agree in principle. If you've got the numbers you're not agreeing with the idea, you're agreeing with a specific implementation of it.

Why would exports collapse and prices rise? VAT would be as it is now -  it might go up, it might go down. It's not directly related. 

Old style socialist solutions? Are you basing this recommendation on their extraordinary worldwide popularity and success? 

Basic income was, and could be, supported by capitalists. Friedman and Hayek were for it. So was Keynes.


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:


> Not trolling. How is it delivered? Cash weekly? Monthly? Lump sum?
> 
> If I get it and spunk the lot, does society still have to safety net me?


No idea. That's hardly a difficult problem to solve though. 

This is the safety net. You want a safety net from the safety net?


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Mar 18, 2013)

This reminds me of a very long running campaign (40 years?).
Wages for Housework

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/70sfeminism/10404.shtml


eta...41 years...quite chuffed that my guess was so close


----------



## ChrisFilter (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No, it's a nonsense to say you need the numbers to agree in principle. If you've got the numbers you're not agreeing with the idea, you're agreeing with a specific implementation of it.
> 
> Why would exports collapse and prices rise? VAT would be as it is now -  it might go up, it might go down. It's not directly related.
> 
> ...



But why even discuss it if there's no move to supply even remotely possible ways that this could work? 

You might as well propose a system where everyone's a millionaire, there are no taxes and people ride unicorns.


----------



## silverfish (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No idea. That's hardly a difficult problem to solve though.
> 
> This is the safety net. You want a safety net from the safety net?


 
Yes, I am a feckless multi substance abusing father of 5 who spunks any cash I get on drugs, the horses and booze

Is society going to draw the line and wash its hands of me and my family


----------



## joustmaster (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No, it's a nonsense to say you need the numbers to agree in principle. If you've got the numbers you're not agreeing with the idea, you're agreeing with a specific implementation of it.


I think you do need some sense of the numbers to be able to agree with the principle of it.


----------



## weltweit (Mar 18, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> This reminds me of a very long running campaign (40 years?).
> Wages for Housework
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/70sfeminism/10404.shtml
> eta...41 years...quite chuffed that my guess was so close


I have long thought that housework and full time child rearing / parenting should be paid.
And as I was a full time child rearer for about ten years I want my pay!!


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## Fez909 (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:


> Yes, I am a feckless multi substance abusing father of 5 who spunks any cash I get on drugs, the horses and booze
> 
> Is society going to draw the line and wash its hands of me and my family


No, you'll get a basic income just like everybody else.


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## 8115 (Mar 18, 2013)

Having thought a bit more about this today I think the problem of non-citizens not being entitled to this could be very damaging.  If most people get a basic income, jobs available don't so much need to be able to keep someone's head above water financially and this could be a real problem for someone who's not entitled to the basic income.  (Not sure who mentioned this on another thread, I do think it could be a big problem though).


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## silverfish (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No, you'll get a basic income just like everybody else.


 
but i've spunked it and we are out on the street eating out of bins and getting really sick


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## Badgers (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:
			
		

> but i've spunked it and we are out on the street eating out of bins and getting really sick



Under the BI model you will find food waste to be fresher and of better quality.


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## Pickman's model (Mar 18, 2013)

Badgers said:


> Under the BI model you will find food waste to be fresher and of better quality.


cigarettes will taste better too.


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## Fez909 (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:


> but i've spunked it and we are out on the street eating out of bins and getting really sick


How do you manage currently?


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## silverfish (Mar 18, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> How do you manage currently?


 
By playing devils advocate on internet forums


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 18, 2013)

How about, for each month worked in the UK you acquire a share of the nations capital? Each month a dividend is paid out on those shares. The longer you have worked, the more your share 'portfolio' is worth, and the bigger your monthly income from this is.


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## DotCommunist (Mar 18, 2013)

that fucks the long term ill, mothers and people stuck in shithole towns with no work.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Mar 18, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> that fucks the long term ill, mothers and people stuck in shithole towns with no work.


 
I'm not saying you would have to get rid of support mechanisms for those that can't work. I'm just spunking out mind-splurges.


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## DotCommunist (Mar 18, 2013)

it sort of goes against the basic idea of a citizen wage in that far from providing a notional tax cut at the top and evening things somewhat at the bottom it's going to leave the groups I mentioned still reliant on a safety net hile those aable and in employment will do better thus creating a ghettoising effect between worker and others. not logical captain


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## DotCommunist (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:


> Yes, I am a feckless multi substance abusing father of 5 who spunks any cash I get on drugs, the horses and booze
> 
> Is society going to draw the line and wash its hands of me and my family


 

what happens now? Does this notional feckless father of five spunk all his dole on the vices? ALL of it? no food, no nappies, no packed lunches, hot water, haircuts etc? I put it to you that his kids would be in care before you can say one forteh nine and a 10 on Billy Tuesday each way.


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## Puddy_Tat (Mar 18, 2013)

silverfish said:


> If I get it and spunk the lot, does society still have to safety net me?


 
surely the same question could be asked of current welfare benefits (see the argument re the idea of some electronic version of 'food stamps' so that the "feckless" can't spend their benefits on fags / booze etc)


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## silverfish (Mar 18, 2013)

Don't mention packed lunches


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## Greebo (Mar 18, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> that fucks the long term ill, mothers and people stuck in shithole towns with no work.


And carers, and people too old or disabled (disability doesn't always mean that you are ill, nor is every long term illness a disability) to work.


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## weltweit (Mar 18, 2013)

Thinking aloud, say an employer is paying £12k for a job at the moment. Say, for arguments sake, BI pays the employee £10k anyway, I can see the employer then only offerring an additional £2k for doing his job. The employee would get the same total but the employer would save £10k. I am assuming that would be an unintended consequence.


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## 8115 (Mar 18, 2013)

weltweit said:


> Thinking aloud, say an employer is paying £12k for a job at the moment. Say, for arguments sake, BI pays the employee £10k anyway, I can see the employer then only offerring an additional £2k for doing his job. The employee would get the same total but the employer would save £10k. I am assuming that would be an unintended consequence.


 
I don't now about you but I'd probably stay at home in that case.


----------



## Fez909 (Mar 18, 2013)

8115 said:


> I don't now about you but I'd probably stay at home in that case.


So would I, but for those who wouldn't then what of it? The employer makes more money so they can afford to employ more people /cut their prices / make more profit.

Basic Income doesn't mean profits are banned or even that business has to suffer at all.


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## BigTom (Mar 19, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> So would I, but for those who wouldn't then what of it? The employer makes more money so they can afford to employ more people /cut their prices / make more profit.
> 
> Basic Income doesn't mean profits are banned or even that business has to suffer at all.



But now you need numbers.

You need to know how many wouldn't work. Too many and you don't have enough people working to tax to pay for BI

If you can't find a way to tax companies properly then it can't work.

You also need to know how companies would split their lowered costs between increased profits, further investment and lowering prices to know the effect on this side of the equation.

In principle, I think that if you can't tax companies properly then BI either can't be paid for or acts as a subsidy to business in much the same way tax credits do, but I'm not sure.

Also, do you have links for hayek supporting BI? I find this hard to believe as he was a total free market person, hated welfare state stuff as far as I know. I'm surprised Friedman did either, surely he'd see this as distorting Labour markets.


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## Fez909 (Mar 19, 2013)

BigTom said:


> But now you need numbers.
> 
> You need to know how many wouldn't work. Too many and you don't have enough people working to tax to pay for BI
> 
> ...


I don't know how I would even go about working out those numbers. I'll do some more research as someone must have tried to calculate this stuff in the 70 years or so the idea has been around.

Here's a quote from Hayek's _Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 3: The Political Order of a Free People_



> The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.


 
He then says he wishes this issue hasn't been mixed in with socialism as they are two completely different things.

Friedman supported a negative income tax, rather than a basic income as described in this thread. There's a lot of overlap on the ideas, though. They're almost the same, except that a negative income tax has the payments being reduced and then eventually removed as you earn more. He was in favour of it because he thought the savings in administrating the tax would reduce the benefits bill. He talks about it in his book _Capitalism and Freedom_ in chapter 12: Alleviation of Poverty.


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## BigTom (Mar 19, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I don't know how I would even go about working out those numbers. I'll do some more research as someone must have tried to calculate this stuff in the 70 years or so the idea has been around.


 
No, I don't know how you'd do it either, I don't know if you could tbh. I think this would have to be seen in practice to find out what it did.



> Here's a quote from Hayek's _Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 3: The Political Order of a Free People_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Cheers, I never read that by Hayek as I'd had enough of him from earlier works that I'd read, surprises me tbh. Friedman I can see now, I'm sure I've read Capitalism and Freedom but I don't remember that. Was a while ago and I didn't like them so I guess I've not tried to hang on to the memories.


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## Fez909 (Mar 19, 2013)

I haven't found any numbers yet, but there have been some limited experiments with basic income done in a few places.

Manitoba, Canada had a scheme called Mincome which ran for a few years in the 70s. There was a small impact on the number of people in work. Around 1% of men chose not to work, and between 3% and 5% of women, with the higher percentage being new mothers. They chose to stay at home and spend more time with their children. Apparently adult education was more popular during this time, too. Students whose parents chose to work less tended to do better in education, and had lower dropout rates. Hospital visits were down 8.5% over this period, with car accident injuries down, domestic abuse down and work related injuries down.

From January 2008 until December 2009, the Basic Income Grant Coalition ran a pilot project for a GBI (this seems to be the more commonly accepted acronym, not BI as I've been using! The G is 'guaranteed', btw) in Otjivero - Omitara, Namibia. Before the scheme started, the village suffered from unemployment, hunger and poverty. After it was introduced, employment and economic activity went up, school drop-out rates went from 40% to zero, household debt fell, percentage of residents below the food poverty line fell from 76% to 37%.

The biggest problem looks to be the increased migration from other villages to this one, which hints at the problems a GBI would cause and has been mentioned in this thread. The migrants were not given the payments yet moved into this area anyway. This distorted the economic data collected as the income per capita reduced.


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## Spanky Longhorn (Mar 19, 2013)

That's the problem with running the project in a small area rather than an entire country I suppose.


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## Fez909 (Mar 19, 2013)

This guy does some back of the fag packet type calculations, and thinks it would be economically possible, but politically unpalatable. He even writes about a few ways this could be eased into existence rather than what he calls the "big bang" approach. I had thought the big bang would be the way it would have to happen, but it would obviously go wrong and so no one would take the risk.

The Universal Credit that the scum are introducing is a similar challenge in that sense. They've gone for a gradual roll-out with existing claimants being moved over in stages, and all new benefit claimants going straight onto UC. I still feel that's going to be a fuck up - in terms of a smooth change-over, that is. politically it's already fucked up.


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## Fez909 (Oct 5, 2013)

The Swiss will be voting on whether to introduce a basic income soon - link


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## yield (Oct 5, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> The Swiss will be voting on whether to introduce a basic income soon - link


On a tangent but 
Swiss war game envisages invasion by bankrupt French
Telegraph. 30 Sep 2013


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## Maurice Picarda (Oct 5, 2013)

yield said:


> On a tangent but
> Swiss war game envisages invasion by bankrupt French
> Telegraph. 30 Sep 2013



It's not the least credible of scenarios.


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## smokedout (Oct 7, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Friedman supported a negative income tax, rather than a basic income as described in this thread. There's a lot of overlap on the ideas, though. They're almost the same, except that a negative income tax has the payments being reduced and then eventually removed as you earn more. He was in favour of it because he thought the savings in administrating the tax would reduce the benefits bill. He talks about it in his book _Capitalism and Freedom_ in chapter 12: Alleviation of Poverty.



thats not a million miles away from universal credit to be honest, it's main difference being that to qualify for UC you have to constantly prove you are looking for work/more work/better paid work.  I suspect Friedman might have approved of that development.


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## Fez909 (Oct 7, 2013)

smokedout said:


> thats not a million miles away from universal credit to be honest, it's main difference being that to qualify for UC you have to constantly prove you are looking for work/more work/better paid work.  I suspect Friedman might have approved of that development.



Aye, Universal Credit is actually roughly the way a Basic Income would be distributed if such a thing existed. The amounts are all wrong, though, and the requirements to attain it should be abolished. But the general idea is the perfect vehicle for introducing a BI.

edit: just realised you're talking about negative income tax, but the point still stands.


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## 8ball (Oct 8, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> This reminds me of a very long running campaign (40 years?).
> Wages for Housework
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/70sfeminism/10404.shtml


 
My house would definitely be cleaner if we had that. 

<is this piece work or by the hour? >


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## camouflage (Oct 11, 2013)

8115 said:


> I think it's a great idea but presumably the cost of it is the major disadvantage. Although by eliminating poverty you would save a fair bit.



I think it's a great idea too, and would work better than handing out lakes of cash to the bankers.


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## Citizen66 (Oct 11, 2013)

Basic income is a good idea but means nothing if it doesn't cover people's basic needs and aspirations.


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## camouflage (Oct 11, 2013)

Not read the whole thread at this point, but the idea that different housing costs make the citizens wage idea complex to implement could be countered with the free-market/free-movement-of-labour type argument that this would cause herds of homo-economicus to move to under-populated areas and bring prices into equilibrium. You get the same wage for being a citizen as everyone else, to get more out of it you'll move to cheaper areas and release more of your spending power in those areas, causing greater economic activity and more jobs and so on.


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## 03gills (Oct 14, 2013)

A citizens income would be fiercely resisted by some, what ever level it was set at.

And that's because the more universal you make a benefit, the less stigmatized it becomes, & the harder it is for turds like IDS or Frank Field to abolish it. Part of the reason the Tories are restricting child benefit to poorer households is to make it much easier for them in the long run to attach conditions to the benefit or scrap it altogether without fuss.

At the moment, the Tories would almost certainly be screwed if they tried to scrap CB altogether. Instead they means test it, and in 5 years time when they decide to mess around with CB some more, the home counties no longer give a shit as they are no longer receiving it.

It's evil personified, but It's a very clever strategy.


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## 03gills (Oct 15, 2013)

Also, just as an aside there was a revenue neutral proposal for a CI, proposed a while back.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/34269


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## 8ball (Oct 15, 2013)

03gills said:


> ... the more universal you make a benefit, the less stigmatized it becomes, & the harder it is for turds like IDS or Frank Field to abolish it. Part of the reason the Tories are restricting child benefit to poorer households is to make it much easier for them in the long run to attach conditions to the benefit or scrap it altogether without fuss.


 
Good point.  We had an argument a couple of years back where I couldn't see the point of richer families getting child benefit - this, (combined with the silliness of paying for means testing when universal benefit combined with progressive taxation is so much more efficient) was the killer argument for me.


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## 8ball (Oct 15, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Basic income is a good idea but means nothing if it doesn't cover people's basic needs and aspirations.


 
I thought it was for basic needs.  Not aspirations.


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## Citizen66 (Oct 16, 2013)

8ball said:


> I thought it was for basic needs.  Not aspirations.



Go to work and slog your guts out in order to feed, clothe yourself and cover travel costs for work the next week? Grim.


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## astral (Oct 16, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Go to work and slog your guts out in order to feed, clothe yourself and cover travel costs for work the next week? Grim.



Surely that depends on how you quantify basic needs.  Feeding and clothing both fall into most people's understanding of basic needs I would have thought.


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## Fez909 (Oct 16, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Go to work and slog your guts out in order to feed, clothe yourself and cover travel costs for work the next week? Grim.



I think you're missing the point here. You'd be able to feed and clothe yourself _without _going to work under a basic income guarantee. Any work you do is all extra money.


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## 8ball (Oct 16, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Go to work and slog your guts out in order to feed, clothe yourself and cover travel costs for work the next week? Grim.


 
Wot Fez said.


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## Treacle Toes (Oct 16, 2013)

Strip away the 'keep up with the middle classes' hierarchical (sp?), unnecessary and often unattainable aspirations, people doing jobs they are passionate about, different work/vocations being equalised in terms of reward and social status, fewer experiences of being made to feel worthless, more time to pursue interests/personal development etc. I imagine they'd be a lot more 'content' people around.


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## ska invita (Oct 17, 2013)

Not read thread yet, but
Switzerland Will Vote to Give All Adults a Guaranteed $2,800 Monthly Income
http://www.policymic.com/articles/6...-all-adults-a-guaranteed-2-800-monthly-income


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## ItWillNeverWork (Oct 17, 2013)

Yearly income of 2500 not monthly, surely?


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## Fez909 (Oct 17, 2013)

No, it's monthly. That's about £20k a year. Switzerland is very expensive though.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Oct 17, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> No, it's monthly. That's about £20k a year. Switzerland is very expensive though.



I'm lost for words. That's bonkers. I wish I was Swiss.


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## DotCommunist (Oct 17, 2013)

the proceeds of nazi gold


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## Fez909 (Oct 17, 2013)

What I don't even understand is how this isn't on anyone's radar in the UK. Aside from Urban, I've never had a conversation with or heard this mentioned by anyone in this country. The Swiss are about to vote on making it actually happen and we don't even know what it is?


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Oct 17, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> the proceeds of nazi gold


 
Switzerland is a Nazi State. Anybody who doesn't work in an investment bank and can't afford a $50000000 watch is considered untermensch.


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## ska invita (Oct 18, 2013)

"Under Swiss law, citizens can organize popular initiatives that allow the channeling of public anger into direct political action. The country usually holds several referenda a year.
In March, Swiss voters backed some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a binding vote on compensation.
A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/04/us-swiss-pay-idUSBRE9930O620131004

the future....


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## revol68 (Oct 23, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> the proceeds of nazi gold



You should read the Holocaust Industry, puts paid to that common misconception, not that it didn't happen but that many other nations including the US were involved in that.


----------



## Ultimate (Oct 24, 2013)

This is a good discussion. I'm generally in favour of BI but, as is clear from everything that's been said in this thread, it's more complicated than it seems and there are certain problems that would have to be worked out before the idea could be put into practice.

On the question of how to account for the great variation in housing costs, I think the most practical approach would be to do what they do now with housing benefit: each local authority area has a different ceiling amount according to the cost of housing in the area. And how much you get would depend on the size of your household. But it would all be paid out as one payment, like Universal Credit will be (if the government can ever get it off the ground).

It would compromise the principal that BI should be a universal benefit - it would take a certain amount of means testing - but that's a sacrifice that has to be made.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> It would compromise the principal that BI should be a universal benefit - it would take a certain amount of means testing - but that's a sacrifice that has to be made.



I disagree with this completely. Without making it universal you're enabling the kind of divisive tactics we see now with existing benefits. Who gets what and why not me and how much would dominate the debate, rather than a simple "how much is it?"

Also, the problem of housing costs differing have been discussed and the universal/same payment actually solves that problem by keeping money in areas with housing but no jobs and removing the economic incentive to migrate to cities and areas of high employment which inevitably means higher housing costs. By reversing this trend, perhaps the jobs would spread out too, so in time we'd have a more harmonious balance between different regions, instead of everything being concentrated in the South East.


----------



## Ultimate (Oct 24, 2013)

Valid point, but it's a big IF. You say PERHAPS jobs would spread out. But suppose they don't? And I think there will always be more work in the cities than in the rural areas, unless there's a huge increase in working from home.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> Valid point, but it's a big IF. You say PERHAPS jobs would spread out. But suppose they don't? And I think there will always be more work in the cities than in the rural areas, unless there's a huge increase in working from home.



I'm not even talking rural vs urban. I'm talking about the powerhouse cities vs failing towns & cities. Middlesbrough, Wakefield, Hull, Burnley, Sunderland, Bradford. These were all thriving urban areas in the past, and most of them are in decline now. People leave them for other places because there's no jobs and it sets off a spiral of despair with falling house prices, fewer skilled workers to even begin to rebuild and shrinking populations.

Whatever the rate was set at, it would mean that areas like Middlesbrough - which has some of the cheapest housing in the country - would become so affordable to people that you would have residents with excess cash after paying all their bills. This is because the rate would have to be high enough that everyone in the country can afford to pay for their essentials. So you'd be getting enough money to live in London, but paying boro prices!

That excess cash would be spent locally and the economy would thrive. People would be attracted to the cheap living and bustling trade and the population decline would reverse. Housing costs would increase with demand. Then once prices approached the more desirable places like the Northern cities, then it would no longer be an attractive option to move to boro. We'd reach an equilibrium.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I disagree with this completely. Without making it universal you're enabling the kind of divisive tactics we see now with existing benefits. Who gets what and why not me and how much would dominate the debate, rather than a simple "how much is it?"


 
This very much reminds me of the housing benefit debate where I was against 'rich people' getting the benefit.  There's a plausible-sounding logic to the means-testing argument but it falls down for several entirely practical reasons and a few moral ones.  Not sure if it was butchers or maybe DLR or another poster that set things out really squarely, but I was dead wrong on that one.  We should make a thread with all the arguments and use it as an 'FAQ'.


----------



## Ultimate (Oct 24, 2013)

I'm not sure that I agree with your theory. It would take more than cheap housing to attract people to places where there's no work. And if places like Middlesborough don't attract business, it would stay poor. Unless you are optimistic enough to think a lot of those unemployed people would set up businesses, which I doubt.

(Sorry, I'm addressing Fez - you beat me to it, 8ball.)


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> (Sorry, I'm addressing Fez - you beat me to it, 8ball.)


 
No prob.  Hope the horse is well.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 24, 2013)

I think that people are very resourceful and can/do respond very well to needing to/opportunities to do for themselves.



> Unless you are optimistic enough to think a lot of those unemployed people would set up businesses, which I doubt.



Unemployed people are people without jobs, not necessarily without skills/aspirations and the abilities to do business. Your statement implies otherwise.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> I'm not sure that I agree with your theory. It would take more than cheap housing to attract people to places where there's no work. And if places like Middlesborough don't attract business, it would stay poor. Unless you are optimistic enough to think a lot of those unemployed people would set up businesses, which I doubt.



Why would it stay poor? Let's assume the basic income is set at £100 a week and that's enough for everyone to live in London and pay for essentials. Housing is going to be a large chunk of that, say £70. And the other £30 is food and bills etc.

Bills are slightly cheaper in boro, but it's not significant, so we'll say it also costs £30 for food and bills in boro. Let's say housing is half the price of London (it's much less in reality). So £35 a week for that. That leaves every resident with £35 left over to spend on what they like. And they get it every week. It's a subsidy for areas with cheap housing which are inevitably areas with no work.

If there's an area which has a lot of spare cash floating about, you can bet that business will be moving into those areas in no time. So now there's more work.

Can you imagine a scenario where people in Middlesbrough have this excess cash and yet no businesses move in to exploit that?


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> I think that people are very resourceful and can/do respond very well to needing to/opportunities to do for themselves.
> 
> 
> 
> Unemployed people are people without jobs, not necessarily without skills/aspirations and the abilities to do business. Your statement implies otherwise.



Very good point and not one I'd even been thinking about above. If people in boro have lots of money but no jobs, then they can just set their own businesses up. If they fail, so what? They've got the basic income to fall back on.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> Unemployed people are people without jobs, not necessarily without skills/aspirations and the abilities to do business. Your statement implies otherwise.


 
To be fair, I think you need a bunch of things to come together in the right person, the right place, the right time, to be able to set up a successful business.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 24, 2013)

_Failure_ is not a forever thing either. People tend to try again and/or try something else.


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## Treacle Toes (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> To be fair, I think you need a bunch of things to come together in the right person, the right place, the right time, to be able to set up a successful business.



I don't disagree but what is a successful business? How do we define that? Surely that depends on the needs/aspirations of the person doing it?


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Very good point and not one I'd even been thinking about above. If people in boro have lots of money but no jobs, then they can just set their own businesses up. If they fail, so what? They've got the basic income to fall back on.


 
That's a really good point - it's so much harder to set up your own enterprise when you stand to lose everything, even your access to healthcare, if things go tits up (unless your business is so large you can dictate to the Government that you should be bailed out by the taxpayer).


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> What is a successful business? How do we define that? Surely that depends on the needs/aspirations of the person doing it?


 
Yes, I'd agree totally with that.  Unfortunately the model of a 'successful business' we live in these days is one where you build something up just enough that you are noticed by the 'big boys' who buy you out and give you enough money to live out the rest of your days in the fat house.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> To be fair, I think you need a bunch of things to come together in the right person, the right place, the right time, to be able to set up a successful business.



But the right time and the right place are things which currently never arrive due to the risks and costs of starting your own business. If you could afford to not earn anything at all while you were setting up, then the time scales between success and failure become much more forgiving.



8ball said:


> That's a really good point - it's so much harder to set up your own enterprise when you stand to lose everything, even your access to healthcare, if things go tits up (unless your business is so large you can dictate to the Government that you should be bailed out by the taxpayer).



Yep, same point!

If you had a basic income, you could afford to sell 1 thing at a profit of a pound and still be in business. Next week you might make 2 quid. No bother, you've still got enough to pay the bills. Slowly ramping up to making decent money. If you only made a quid a week currently, you'd be fucked after 1 week.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> Yes, I'd agree totally with that.  Unfortunately the model of a 'successful business' we live in these days is one where you build something up just enough that you are noticed by the 'big boys' who buy you out and give you enough money to live out the rest of your days in the fat house.




But with BI that model/values that come along with it would change that for many i imagine. It's an attitude shift yes, but I don't think it's undoable!


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> If you had a basic income, you could afford to sell 1 thing at a profit of a pound and still be in business. Next week you might make 2 quid. No bother, you've still got enough to pay the bills. Slowly ramping up to making decent money. If you only made a quid a week currently, you'd be fucked after 1 week.


 
Ok, devil's advocate time, but it could be argued that a business is not viable if it is not covering the cost of all its inputs.  Sure, if it's a hobby you might be happy to cover some of the costs yourself, but in the 'basic income' model you are expecting the *really* viable enterprises to cover the shortfall by guaranteeing basic income, and I'm not sure you get a viable economy composed of people who want society in general to cover the fiscal deficits inherent to their hobbies.

edit: that reads horribly but I'm a bit drunk - happy to rephrase if its incoherent (hic)


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> But with BI that model/values that come along with it would change that for many i imagine. It's an attitude shift yes, but I don't think it's undoable!


 
Me neither.  I've always had an issue with the way 99.999% of business have the sole focus of becoming bigger, when becoming better is only of tangential relevance.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> Me neither.  I've always had an issue with the way 99.999% of business have the sole focus of becoming bigger, when becoming better is only of tangential relevance.



I share the same issue. IME the compromises made and impact of this attitude is the problem.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> I share the same issue. IME the compromises made and impact of this attitude is the problem.


 
It always sticks in my mind how the day after Levi Roots got his contract on Dragons Den his Mum's kitchen was closed to business and production was moved to Poland.


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> Ok, devil's advocate time, but it could be argued that a business is not viable if it is not covering the cost of all its inputs.  Sure, if it's a hobby you might be happy to cover some of the costs yourself, but in the 'basic income' model you are expecting the *really* viable enterprises to cover the shortfall by guaranteeing basic income, and I'm not sure you get a viable economy composed of people who want society in general to cover the fiscal deficits inherent to their hobbies.



OK, a few points:

Not everyone is going to want to start their own business. It's just an option. If everyone who does want to start a business makes £1 in profit, then there's nothing wrong with that. Profit is profit. It means the owner has got more out than she put in.

Then there are the people who just don't want to work at all. They will be few, and perhaps it will be different people at different times. But it's OK, as there's not enough work for everyone as it is. And with increased mechanization and automation of previously manual and even skilled work, this trend will only increase. So there will have to be people unemployed or having 'hobby' businesses. Full employment isn't going to happen. Unless we change working practices to have more part-time workers? That'd be a good outcome, I suppose.

Then there will be people - the majority - who work for others. Just like now. They'll be at profitable businesses and they'll have more money than those who don't work and those who have new businesses. They'll pay taxes and contribute to society just like now. Only their taxes will be put to better use than ever before.


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## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> . If everyone who does want to start a business makes £1 in profit, then there's nothing wrong with that. Profit is profit. It means the owner has got more out than she put in.


 
More than SHE put in.  It's not a generalised profit if others have been compelled to put in too.



Fez909 said:


> Then there are the people who just don't want to work at all. They will be few, and perhaps it will be different people are different times. But it's OK, as there's not enough work for everyone as it is.


 
This is the 'lump of labour' fallacy.  There is not a finite amount of 'work'.



Fez909 said:


> And with increased mechanization and automation of previously manual and even skilled work, this trend will only increase..


 
Yeah, this was a big idea 50 years ago - what has actually happened is that the nature of economic resources has changed - 'process' (in terms of information) and 'energy' (for now) remain cheap ('process' more than ever), but human attention has come under massively increased demand, hence the profitability of call centres and other service industries.

As for more part-time workers - that's an interesting point.  A few years ago I suggested that I could reduce my hours and job share with someone else - the company wasn't into the idea.  Could probably make a whole new thread over the likely reasons behind that...


----------



## Ultimate (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> OK, a few points:
> 
> Not everyone is going to want to start their own business. It's just an option. If everyone who does want to start a business makes £1 in profit, then there's nothing wrong with that. Profit is profit. ...
> Then there will be people - the majority - who work for others. Just like now. They'll be at profitable businesses and they'll have more money than those who don't work and those who have new businesses. They'll pay taxes and contribute to society just like now. Only their taxes will be put to better use than ever before.


I agree with all that, but I think we're back to the problem of how much should be paid out, and how it would be funded. I'm not saying it's not economically feasible - as I said, I support the idea - but I'm still undecided about the practicalities.


----------



## Ultimate (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> More than SHE put in.  It's not a generalised profit if others have been compelled to put in too.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


We also have to take into account, as Fez has been saying, what BI itself would do to the economy. Also, we have to look beyond the UK, because we're in a global economy and it's probably here to stay. If BI was introduced in the UK, it would probably spread across most of the rest of the developed world as well.Who knows what effect that would have on the economy? But hopefully it would help spread wealth more evenly around the world as well as around individual countries.


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## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> We also have to take into account, as Fez has been saying, what BI itself would do to the economy. Also, we have to look beyond the UK, because we're in a global economy and it's probably here to stay. If BI was introduced in the UK, it would probably spread across most of the rest of the developed world as well.


 
I think with predatory capitalism working the way it does, if it was adopted in just one country it would be exploited as a weakness.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> We also have to take into account, as Fez has been saying, what BI itself would do to the economy. Also, we have to look beyond the UK, because we're in a global economy and it's probably here to stay. If BI was introduced in the UK, it would probably spread across most of the rest of the developed world as well.Who knows what effect that would have on the economy? But hopefully it would help spread wealth more evenly around the world as well as around individual countries.



It's unlikely to begin here, but you're right that it would spread to other countries if it was a success. Switzerland is voting on it soon and it is set a fairly high rate. Alaska already runs a semi-related scheme: They share money from the oil revenues with every citizen, but it varies and isn't enough to live on. It has changed the state from one of the most unequal to one of the most equal, though, even though it's not a true BI.

I'd imagine a Scandinavian country would be first to introduce it. Although their flavour of capitalism seems to be doing OK at the minute, so I guess they have fewer reasons to change.



8ball said:


> More than SHE put in.  It's not a generalised profit if others have been compelled to put in too.
> 
> This is the 'lump of labour' fallacy.  There is not a finite amount of 'work'.
> 
> ...



You saying a woman can't own a business?  

I don't get what you mean by generalised profit and others being compelled to put in. Could you explain, please?

Finite work doesn't exist, sure. But there is only so much we are prepared to pay people to do to keep themselves busy. We wouldn't pay people to go around cleaning paving slabs, for instance, but it exists as one avenue of work. So we have a de facto limit, IMO.

I think part time work/sharing is one of the main benefits of a BI along with the eradication of poverty. I mentioned it in the first or second post on here.


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ultimate said:


> I agree with all that, but I think we're back to the problem of how much should be paid out, and how it would be funded. I'm not saying it's not economically feasible - as I said, I support the idea - but I'm still undecided about the practicalities.



kabbes said he knew the numbers stacked up. Perhaps he could help out here?

I don't mean calculate them btw! Just you mentioned it recently that you knew it could be done economically.


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## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> You saying a woman can't own a business?
> 
> I don't get what you mean by generalised profit and others being compelled to put in. Could you explain, please?


 
What I mean is that if someone is propped up by a basic income then there is no need for their business to be profitable at all, or even cover costs.  In an environment where profit is unnecessary, everyone will take more 'pleasant' work up until the point where it becomes materially prohibitive (that possibly often being the point at which the deficits cut significantly into their basic income. Thus there is never any incentive to take work that has a positive economic output where more pleasant work is available, and before long there is no one actually doing the work that pays for the 'basic income'.


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> What I mean is that if someone is propped up by a basic income then there is no need for their business to be profitable at all, or even cover costs.  In an environment where profit is unnecessary, everyone will take more 'pleasant' work up until the point where it becomes materially prohibitive (that possibly often being the point at which the deficits cut significantly into their basic income. Thus there is never any incentive to take work that has a positive economic output where more pleasant work is available, and before long there is no one actually doing the work that pays for the 'basic income'.



I don't think this scenario is likely. Firstly, how are they supporting themselves if their business doesn't cover costs? The basic income is enough to live on, not enough to support a failing business. Then even assuming this were possible, why would anyone choose to work when it costs them money if they could sit at home and watch TV and be better off? It doesn't make sense. You'd literally be better off doing nothing. And doing something, anything, else would put you at a massive advantage.

What's the rationale in setting up/maintaining a failing business in this environment?


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I don't think this scenario is likely. Firstly, how are they supporting themselves if their business doesn't cover costs?


 
Basic income - clue is in the thread title.  A business needs to support its own costs, the day to day needs of everyone involved, plus taxes in order to be viable.  The taxes pay for the basic income of others.



Fez909 said:


> Then even assuming this were possible, why would anyone choose to work when it costs them money if they could sit at home and watch TV and be better off?


 
Many people enjoy having hobbies that bring in a little money.  And they bring in more doing so than those people sat on the sofa - who is paying for them?


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> Basic income - clue is in the thread title.  A business needs to support its own costs, the day to day needs of everyone involved, plus taxes in order to be viable.  The taxes pay for the basic income of others.



But a basic income isn't enough to plug the income gap from running a business. I don't know where you've got this idea. If you've got a business which loses money, then your business is going to go down. You can't top it up from your basic income because you need that to pay this week's gas bill and rent.

It's a strange situation you're proposing here.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> But a basic income isn't enough to plug the income gap from running a business. I don't know where you've got this idea. If you've got a business which loses money, then your business is going to go down. You can't top it up from your basic income because you need that to pay this week's gas bill and rent.
> 
> It's a strange situation you're proposing here.


 
It's not at all.  People's income is what they gain from taking part in positive economic activity, they use this to fund the things they do that are nice, but not economically profitable (the 'holy grail' being things that are nice AND economically profitable).  What happens when you inject an artifical source of income while someone is 'working' is that it allows nonprofitable activities to be sustained by other profitable ventures.

Non profitable activites may be fantastic, obv, but need to be justified on something other than economic grounds.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> It's not at all.  People's income is what they gain from taking part in positive economic activity, they use this to fund the things they do that are nice, but not economically profitable (the 'holy grail' being things that are nice AND economically profitable).  What happens when you inject an artifical source of income while someone is 'working' is that it allows nonprofitable activities to be sustained by other profitable ventures.
> 
> Non profitable activites may be fantastic, obv, but need to be justified on something other than economic grounds.



But you're missing the main point I'm trying to make: a basic income is not enough to prop up a failing business.


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## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> But you're missing the main point I'm trying to make: a basic income is not enough to prop up a failing business.


 
That is not my point - it is enough to support a life's work of no economic value, though. 
Of course, economic value is not the only kind of value, but it is the kind of value that pays for the basic income.


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> That is not my point - it is enough to support a life's work of no economic value, though.
> Of course, economic value is not the only kind of value, but it is the kind of value that pays for the basic income.



So you think the entire country is going to be happy living on a basic income and working 40 hours a week doing a hobby project? You'd have no spending money, you'd have to go to work every day just to break even. If you lose any money, then it's coming out of your basic income, so you could be fucked in other areas of your life.

Why? Why would anyone do this to themselves? I don't get it.

Let's assume they would, though. The business has costs, right? They buy products, use other businesses and suppliers. Those other business and suppliers are likely to be profit making businesses. They're going to be selling their cake mixtures to gullible 40-hour a week hobby worker and extracting profit from the transaction. They'll be taking home more than their basic income each week and paying into the tax system to fund this experiment. As long as everyone doesn't turn into this work for nothing person you've invented, what's the harm?


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> So you think the entire country is going to be happy living on a basic income and working 40 hours a week doing a hobby project?


 
Where did I say they would spend 40 hours a week on it?  Could be 6, could be 106..


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## Fez909 (Oct 24, 2013)

8ball said:


> Where did I say they would spend 40 hours a week on it?  Could be 6, could be 106..



But either way, they're doing no harm. And they're working for nothing. They'd be as skint as someone sat at home watching TV - perhaps more so, due the risks of losing money and having to balance the books from your BI.

You must admit that this is going to be a minute fraction of the population? It's not even worth thinking about, IMO.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 24, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> But either way, they're doing no harm. And they're working for nothing. They'd be as skint as someone sat at home watching TV - perhaps more so, due the risks of losing money and having to balance the books from your BI.


 
You seem to have this ass-backwards - people at home watching TC are contributing nothing (the reason for the existence of the TV is to provide an audience to advertisers - without them spending all day at work earning money to either spend on advertised goods or a taxed broadcasting system the TV ceases to exist).  The people I am talking about are contributing something where arguably there are kinds of value generated that our economic system does not recognise.  But they would still be dependent on mainstream economic value creation to sustain their basic income.  Without ANY value creation everyone starves and the argument is moot.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> You seem to have this ass-backwards - people at home watching TC are contributing nothing (the reason for the existence of the TV is to provide an audience to advertisers - without them spending all day at work earning money to either spend on advertised goods or a taxed broadcasting system the TV ceases to exist).  The people I am talking about are contributing something where arguably there are kinds of value generated that our economic system does not recognise.  But they would still be dependent on mainstream economic value creation to sustain their basic income.  Without ANY value creation everyone starves and the argument is moot.



I don't think I do have it backwards. I think you have got this idea into your head and for some reason want to run with it.

There are currently 30 million people in employment in the UK. Do you think a significant proportion of those 30m are going to give up their jobs to pursue a hobby business which leaves them with no disposable income as well as exposing them to the risk of not having enough money to pay the bills? If you don't, then there isn't any problem. They will continue to go to work and pay into the tax system and "value creation" can continue. If you do, can you explain what would motivate someone to do this? And not just one person; enough to bring the economy crashing down...

And btw, the TV thing was just to illustrate the futility of working when you're worse off than others who are economically inactive. It could have been playing in the park, whittling sticks or reading a book. The point still stands.


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## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> will continue to go to work and pay into the tax system and ...


 
Why would people continue to go into work and pay into the tax system?


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## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> Why would people continue to go into work and pay into the tax system?



Many people like working, especially if they are in jobs that they have pride in and/or create a sense of purpose. You talk abot hobbie jobs, many people's hobbies are only hobbies because under the current climate and attitudes they can't make a viable living out of them.


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## Fez909 (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> Why would people continue to go into work and pay into the tax system?



Seriously?

It means the difference between existing and enjoying life. Basic income isn't going to mean a life of luxury. It's enough to pay the bills and that's it. There'd be no eating out, theme parks, holidays, camping trips, barbecues, home improvement, gadgets, etc., etc.

But if you worked a few days a week, you'd have so much more. The basic income is still there, you could still have shit loads of time off, but now you've got cash to do the things you want to do to enrich your life. Then there would be workaholics who will work whatever hours are available, no matter how much money they've got. And there would be people who enjoy work. And people who don't particular enjoy it, but are used to it. And those who just want the money; more than part-time can provide, but not working every hour God sends.

It's a no brainer.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> Many people like working, especially if they are in jobs that they have pride in/create a sense of purpose.


 
Yes, this was my point about what is missing from Fez's analysis.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

> Yes, this was my point about what is missing from Fez's analysis.



LOL, don't use me to get at him! 

He may not have spelt it out in the way I did above but I was assuming this was obvious. If people have some sense of basic security to live/get by, they are much freer to pursue jobs that are more meaningful to them. Attitudes would change in the way we 'value' different professions etc hopefully, that way people wouldn't be forced to do jobs that ultimately they hate but have to do because they see no other choice.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> LOL, don't use me to get at him!


 


I'm not trying to 'get at' anyone.  If anything I'm on side with you.  I'm just chucking out the first objections that I see being chucked out at me if I was to suggest such an idea when down the pub.


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## Fez909 (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> Yes, this was my point about what is missing from Fez's analysis.



If that was your point, why didn't you just make it?


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## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> If that was your point, why didn't you just make it?


 
I thought I had, but I may be a bit drunk


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> I thought I had, but I may be a bit drunk



Fair enough


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> I'm not trying to 'get at' anyone.  If anything I'm on side with you.  I'm just chucking out the first objections that I see being chucked out at me if I was to suggest such an idea when down the pub.



Yeah I know, was just a turn of phrase, not a real accusation at all.


----------



## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Fair enough


 
I'm trying to take my ideas and bash them against the wall a bit to see if they stand up.  I'm not an economis but I'm trying to employ what little knowledge of economics that I do understand to this idea.  Because the 'universal income' idea is very close to the 'something for nothing idea', at least on a cursory appraisal, and usually the 'something for nothing' ideas involve someone* getting fucked over at some point.

* - if it's Michael Gove I'm still in


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## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> He may not have spelt it out in the way I did above but I was assuming this was obvious. If people have some sense of basic security to live/get by, they are much freer to pursue jobs that are more meaningful to them. Attitudes would change in the way we 'value' different professions etc hopefully, that way people wouldn't be forced to do jobs that ultimately they hate but have to do because they see no other choice.



Sorry to quote myself but further to this...

Has the impact of barter/exchange been discussed or explored in this discussion? I'm too tired to review the whole thread so sorry if it has.


----------



## Fez909 (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> Sorry to quote myself but further to this...
> 
> Has the impact of barter/exchange been discussed or explored in this discussion? I'm too tired to review the whole thread so sorry if it has.



No, not as far as I'm aware. How do you think it would be relevant?


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

With BI, more people have more time to pursue hobbies/interests/use skills etc which may or may not progress to monetary income and/or produce things that can be bartered/exchanged. This kind of trade/trading would surely have an impact?

ETA. I personally think it would have a positive impact.


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## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

But this does not tell us what is the meaning of Stonehenge.


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> But this does not tell us what is the meaning of Stonehenge.



Go there, find out what the meaning is for yourself. Yours may be different to mine but it doesn't matter. Having a sense of meaning/purpose is the point.


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## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> Go there, find out what the meaning is for yourself. Yours may be different to mine but it doesn't matter. Having a sense of meaning/purpose is the point.


 
It's not just us.


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## Treacle Toes (Oct 25, 2013)

8ball said:


> It's not just us.





It has to start somewhere, there is value in 1 as much as in 2000 and beyond. Can't always be waiting for others to see things the same way before we try ourselves.


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## 8ball (Oct 25, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> It has to start somewhere, there is value in 1 as much as in 2000 and beyond.


 
I think so too.  My bank disagrees.


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## Fez909 (Nov 17, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> With BI, more people have more time to pursue hobbies/interests/use skills etc which may or may not progress to monetary income and/or produce things that can be bartered/exchanged. This kind of trade/trading would surely have an impact?
> 
> ETA. I personally think it would have a positive impact.



Sorry to take so long to reply to this.

I can see what you're saying but I'm not sure that it would necessarily follow. If free time was the only benefit to this scheme then perhaps, but it seems to me that the increased money in circulation would mean there wouldn't be a huge shift from monetary compensation towards bartering. Why swap when you can just sell something? And if you find you can sell it, and there are people willing to buy it, then that just becomes a business.

One of money's greatest strengths is being able to abstract value so that we are able to trade easily without worrying about whether we are getting a fair deal or that the things we want/need are immediately available. Of course it's not perfect in that, and it's perhaps not preferable for society, but I think it's efficiency can't be denied.


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## Fez909 (Nov 18, 2013)

Basic income seems to be seeping into public awareness ever more with yet another article in the mainstream press.

And this fella has attempted to build a mathematical model to see if it was more cost effective to implement a basic income or a basic job using Monte Carlo simulations. I think his model is flawed in many more ways that he considers - it is far, far too simple for one - but there are people working on better versions based off his code. Good to see more work being done on the numbers, rather than the concept, even if they're a long way off yet.


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

The Economist now: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/11/government-guaranteed-basic-income

It definitely feels like this idea is gaining momentum


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

The swiss vote is on Monday i think


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

ska invita said:


> The swiss vote is on Monday i think



Isn't that for the CEO to worker pay ratio? I read recently that the basic income vote might take two years!


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Isn't that for the CEO to worker pay ratio? I read recently that the basic income vote might take two years!


you're right

"A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24."

voting on a sunday - they're so on it!


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

ska invita said:


> you're right
> 
> "A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24."
> 
> voting on a sunday - they're so on it!



Apparently it has a good chance of passing. Good shit, Swiss


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## Puddy_Tat (Nov 21, 2013)

8ball said:


> But this does not tell us what is the meaning of Stonehenge.



It's part of the structure of a prehistoric coach station.

from when the national express network of the day was buses like this, except pulled by dinosaurs


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## Citizen66 (Nov 21, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> I think you're missing the point here. You'd be able to feed and clothe yourself _without _going to work under a basic income guarantee. Any work you do is all extra money.



Not sure I entirely agree with that!  

Everyone should have at least their basic needs covered AND share in the labour, if able. Of course if everyone is working for needs rather than profit then you won't be forced into doing a gruelling 40 hour week. I don't like the idea of one group of people doing the graft and another group not though. Many hands make light work!


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Apparently it has a good chance of passing. Good shit, Swiss


yeah would be great. 12-1 not as low as I'd like of course, but lets see, a company where a boss is on a million, means the lowest paid worker would be on... 84,000! not bad for a cleaning job  i havent seen any detail about how theyre planning to get out of it if it passes...


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Not sure I entirely agree with that!
> 
> Everyone should have at least their basic needs covered AND share in the labour, if able. Of course if everyone is working for needs rather than profit then you won't be forced into doing a gruelling 40 hour week. I don't like the idea of one group of people doing the graft and another group not though. Many hands make light work!


i dont understand your post at all - do you mind explaining it? are you suggesting i *have* to work ("share in the labour")?

what dont you agree with?


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> Not sure I entirely agree with that!
> 
> Everyone should have at least their basic needs covered AND share in the labour, if able. Of course if everyone is working for needs rather than profit then you won't be forced into doing a gruelling 40 hour week. I don't like the idea of one group of people doing the graft and another group not though. Many hands make light work!



Why? Work is invented these days, rather than it being a necessity. What's the point of everyone doing made-up jobs and wasting resources when we can afford for them to do what they wish?

You're also assuming that just because people can do nowt all day then they will choose to. I think people would rather work.


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## Citizen66 (Nov 21, 2013)

2 replies in quick succession! Firstly, are we discussing this in the context of capitalism, or some future utopia? I'm strictly discussing the latter so if it's the former then sorry for crossed wires. 

And regarding the latter, well there's a whole debate to be had as to what constitutes 'work'. But I'm not entirely comfortable with some kind of opt out system. What happens if everyone decides to opt out?


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> 2 replies in quick succession! Firstly, are we discussing this in the context of capitalism, or some future utopia? I'm strictly discussing the latter so if it's the former then sorry for crossed wires.
> 
> And regarding the latter, well there's a whole debate to be had as to what constitutes 'work'. But I'm not entirely comfortable with some kind of opt out system. What happens if everyone decides to opt out?



Within capitalism. Just think of it like this: instead of some people getting benefits; everyone does. And it's the same amount no matter your circumstances.


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

AS in it kicks in tomorrow, definitely


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## Citizen66 (Nov 21, 2013)

Fez909 said:


> Within capitalism. Just think of it like this: instead of some people getting benefits; everyone does. And it's the same amount no matter your circumstances.



Oh right. Well then yeah, Obviously I'm in favour of a downward shift in wealth, not an upward one.


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> What happens if everyone decides to opt out?


it wont happen. Fez, could you remind us of where basic income has already been implemented and what happened. Wasnt it in Canada somewhere? And somewhere else too? I forget


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## Citizen66 (Nov 21, 2013)

ska invita said:


> it wont happen. Fez, could you remind us of where basic income has already been implemented and what happened. Wasnt it in Canada somewhere? And somewhere else too? I forget



It might not. But I'd rather not sign and seal it so *structurally* it could. I'd be pissed doing earlies on the bins for five days while others are getting a lie in and a day pondering their existence. We could do a day each, yeah?


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> It might not. But I'd rather not sign and seal it so *structurally* it could. I'd be pissed doing earlies on the bins for five days while others are getting a lie in and a day pondering their existence. We could do a day each, yeah?


The market would still operate in terms of what jobs get done by whom - its wont be a communist-era, decided-for-you thing. There'd still be people up for doing the bins, and local councils would still be the employer - it will be interesting to see how the value of those jobs changes (both social and monetary).


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

this is what happened in Canada  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome


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## ska invita (Nov 21, 2013)

fuck it, lets try it and see what happens


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> It might not. But I'd rather not sign and seal it so *structurally* it could. I'd be pissed doing earlies on the bins for five days while others are getting a lie in and a day pondering their existence. We could do a day each, yeah?



Yes, one of the advantages is that job sharing becomes economically viable. But even if not, I think you'd still have people doing the bins as that is money on top of their basic income. And the basic income is no life of Riley. It's just enough to get by.

As ska says, they introduced this in Canada for 5 years and they didn't see everyone pack in work. Working hours dropped 1% for men, 3 or 5% for women, depending if they were married or not.

They also have a similar thing in Alaska, but not quite. Every year there is a dividend paid out by the state to every citizen, and it is a share of the oil profits. It's not enough to live on, but it's in the thousands of dollars some years. The state went from being one of the most unequal in the US to one of the most equal.

There were trials in Namibia which were wholly positive, and there is an ongoing trial in India now which has seen villages "spending more on food and healthcare, children's school performance improved in 68 percent of families, time spent in school nearly tripled, personal savings tripled, and new business startups doubled."


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## butchersapron (Nov 21, 2013)

ska invita said:


> this is what happened in Canada  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome


This was Friedmanite Negative Income Tax rather than Basic Income (and in a tiny one industry town). The Alaska example is proper basic income.


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## Fez909 (Nov 21, 2013)

One thing that's interesting about that Mincome experiment is the reduction in hospital visits, car accidents, domestic abuse and mental illness levels. 8.5% fewer hospital visits according to Wiki. That would save a lot of money in the NHS if those numbers were able to be reproduced here.


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## ska invita (Nov 22, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> This was Friedmanite Negative Income Tax rather than Basic Income (and in a tiny one industry town). The Alaska example is proper basic income.


is this it/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

what do you think about basic income butchers?


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## butchersapron (Nov 22, 2013)

ska invita said:


> is this it/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
> 
> what do you think about basic income butchers?


Yep, that's it.

I'll be totally honest. I've no interest at all in the idea - and that's not to disparage anyone else's interest. I only replied above as i was flicking through Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom by Daniel Raventos yesterday afternoon.


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## ska invita (Nov 22, 2013)

will have a look at a hard copy of that... i know theres also this out there






the "egalitarian capitalism" bit might put some people off, but i think that would be premature


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## Spanky Longhorn (Nov 22, 2013)

Sounds interesting I like Olin-Wrights stuff that I've seen.


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## ska invita (Nov 22, 2013)

Spanky Longhorn said:


> Sounds interesting I like Olin-Wrights stuff that I've seen.


i had a flick through - its a collection and looks quite academic - but thats as far as i got


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## butchersapron (Nov 22, 2013)

Olin wright is a marxist who is after stakeholder as bridge to something else. But the main thing is, get the state to agree to and then enforce stake-holding. Us enforcing stake-holding - good, brilliant. Like communities insisting that if any new places open up there they meet _community_ standards or they will have no workers, no access and not a fucking thing.


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## ska invita (Nov 23, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Olin wright is a marxist who is after stakeholder as bridge to something else. But the main thing is, get the state to agree to and then enforce stake-holding. Us enforcing stake-holding - good, brilliant. Like communities insisting that if any new places open up there they meet _community_ standards or they will have no workers, no access and not a fucking thing.


this post sounds interesting but i dont understand it - could you explain?

-

article in teh FT behind paywall so C&P
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2013/11/21/1697992/guest-post-the-precariat-needs-a-basic-income/?

Guest post: The precariat needs a basic income
Guest writer | Nov 21 10:33 | 21 comments |

By Dr. Guy Standing, professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies and author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, in which he argues that society must share the rental income gained by finance and capital investment in the global economy.
All over Europe, the precariat has grown sharply since 2008, although this emerging class, which has education but only intermittent, unstable labour, has been growing since the beginning of globalisation. The precariat faces chronic uncertainty, about what to do, about what incomes to expect, about state benefits that might be their due, about their relationships, their homes and about the occupations they can realistically expect.

Many are bewildered by lack of control over their time, suffering from what should be called a precariatised mind, not knowing what to do to give themselves a chance of a dignified life. Worst of all, they are learning that a large class of people habituated to a life of unstable labour is wanted by the globalised market system.

The precariat is not part of the squeezed middle, and accordingly has faced an increasingly hostile social protection system. Across Europe, not just in the UK, the old Beveridge and Bismarckian variants of the welfare state have been dismantled. In their place has been erected a mish-mash of means-tested, behaviour-tested social assistance, with a growing tendency to force young unemployed into workfare schemes, which are helping to depress real wages.

There is the rub. Globalisation began what should be called the Great Convergence, creating a globalising labour market in which wages in emerging market economies slowly converge with wages in rich economies, generating a steady drop in real wages across Europe.
Technological change has helped, by making production more scattered and mobile. But the drop in wages in the lower end of the labour markets of the UK and elsewhere, including Germany, reflects the cruel economic logic stemming from the trebling of global labour supply since the 1980s. Making it more painful is the fact that productivity is rising rapidly in those emerging market economies.

A feature of the globalising labour market is that the old link between productivity and wages stopped in the 1980s. Up to then, a graph of productivity growth and wages showed the two lines moving together. Since then the curves have diverged, leading to economists referring to the opening jaws of the snake – the wage curve has been flat or declining, the productivity growth curve has been accelerating northwards.







(Chart courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute.)
Governments have acted like Canute, trying to hold back the waves of downward pressure on real wages, through cheap credit, labour subsidies and the scam of the era, tax credits. But, to mix metaphors, the Faustian bargain this represented, by allowing an orgy of consumption, ended with a bang in 2008.


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## ska invita (Nov 23, 2013)

Since then, poverty, inequality and economic uncertainty have all risen remorselessly. Even if economic growth picks up, that will continue until governments change their thinking quite dramatically. Regrettably, there is not much intellectual courage around in our political establishment.
The current great white hope is the living wage. It is a good idea being oversold. In the UK, Ed Miliband has promised to introduce fiscal subsidies for “employers” (probably not including small firms) if they pay new employees the hourly living wage, which is higher than the statutory minimum wage. It sounds attractive to non-economists and politicians. Let me be a spoil-sport and be one of the first to predict it will lumber in for the first round, connect with a few hits and then prove a costly way of generating little benefit to a tiny fraction of the precariat.

Why? First, there are always huge deadweight effects with such subsidies. In other words, many of the tax rebates will go to employers who would have paid that wage anyhow. So, for every job actually created the fiscal cost will rise.

Second, there will be huge substitution effects. Employers will displace some employees with new hires who will entitle them to the tax rebate. That will hardly be fair. But again it will raise the effective cost of each extra job funded by the scheme.
Third, a wage subsidy lowers the dynamic efficiency effects of a normal wage rise. If, for example, labour costs rise as a result of a wage rise induced by bargaining, an employer will be under pressure to raise productivity. If the wage rise is financed by a subsidy, there is no such pressure. It is called the soft budget constraint.

Fourth, increasingly labour is being externalised, so that more and more workers are labouring froma distance, making it harder to ascertain what hours are being worked and what are being remunerated. Already, many workers are paid part-time but expected to labour many more hours. So, if an employer wants to put someone on the living wage, he can simply shorten the contractual hours.

Being entrepreneurial, employers will always stretch the rules. It is possible that the living wage will prove regressive, expensively worsening inequality in the lower rungs of the labour market. One hopes not, but it will not strengthen the bargaining position of the precariat one iota.
Living wage advocates should not misread this. We should favour the campaign. But it should not be oversold or financed by subsidies to employers, to capital. This was the folly of New Labour and its tax credits. It is the inequality that should be the primary target for reforms.
This leads to an option that should tick the boxes of progressives, once they accept that labour subsidies, tax credits and workfare are an ugly concoction that worsens inequalities.

Progressives and disillusioned social democrats should reflect on the thought that each type of economy has a distinctive system of distribution. Twentieth-century welfare state capitalism was historically unique, in that national income was split between wages and profits, labour and capital.
With globalisation, the share going to labour has withered everywhere, in countries as diverse as China, India, the UK, USA and Norway. In the future, the only way those relying on labour could raise their living standards will be by sharing the rental income gained by finance and capital investment in the global economy. We must imagine a new system of distribution, in which the whole of society receives a share of the rental income currently being taken wholly by financial capital.

This could be done by establishing a universal floor of basic security, through provision of a basic income for all resident citizens, or all legalised residents. It could start at a modest level, as it was in Alaska when it set up its Permanent Fund in 1976. It could be built up as subsidies to the rich and to large corporations were phased out.

It could have a fixed component set to rise as national income per capita rose, set by an independent committee, analogous to the current monetary committee. And it could have a second component, perhaps 20 per cent of the total, which could be adjusted counter-cyclically so as to make it a macro-economic stabiliser. It could even be labelled an Economic Stabilisation Credit (ESC), to give it legitimation.

Moves in this direction could be made by phasing out the array of regressive subsidies that never reach the precariat. It could also be partially funded by a Sovereign Wealth Fund, as now exist in over 60 countries. The Norwegians set one up with their North Sea oil, whereas Britain’s oil has ended up largely owned by Chinese state capital. But however funded, nobody should be allowed to deceive us by saying it is unaffordable. Soon it may be essential. Remember the billions given out to the failed banks?

Among the many benefits of moving towards an individual, unconditional basic income, or an ESC, would be that it would provide the precariat with an increased incentive to labour, whereas today millions of people face the opposite, confronted by poverty traps and precarity traps, as discussed in my recent books.

In the UK, the main poverty trap facing the precariat is a marginal tax rate of over 80 per cent, according to the government’s own estimates. If we are to believe Ian Duncan Smith, it might fall to 65 per cent if the ill-fated universal credit is ever implemented successfully. Meanwhile, the government eagerly cuts the tax rate for the rich to below 40 per cent, claiming that anything higher would be a disincentive to work and invest. And they wish to cut corporation tax to 20 per cent.

With a basic income, there would be no poverty trap. All earned income could be taxed at the standard rate, after tax allowances are taken into account. Today, the precariat has no incentive to take low-paying jobs of the type that will proliferate. So Duncan Smith resorts to coercion instead, with heavy-handed sanctions against the precariat, denied any due process. It is a shoddy way to treat people, and all of our major political parties support it.

There are other reasons, ethical and instrumental, for supporting a move towards a basic income. Psychologists (e.g., Frohlich and Oppenheimer, 1992) have shown that people with basic security work harder, are more productive, and are more altruistic and tolerant. They also have more confidence, which means they will be more likely to bargain for decent wages and working conditions, and join organisations that wish to do so. And people with basic security do more work that is not labour, such as caring for relatives and their communities. In having more control over their time, they can be more rational and plan their lives better. Progressives should wake up.
Anybody who thinks this might be a valuable move should sign the European Citizens’ Initiative . With enough signatures, the EU Commission will be obliged to examine its feasibility. https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/REQ-ECI-2012-000028/public/index.do


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## ska invita (Nov 23, 2013)

more than 1 person in the comments in that piece say that bringing in basic income would just mean rents/house prices go up to eat up the difference.

+ this response

Could someone explain to me why a UBI would directly lead to an increase in rents, while introducing a property tax wouldn't? My thinking is as follows, and I'd be happy to hear if I'm making a mistake somewhere.

I always thought people misunderstood UBI when assuming it increases everyone's income by a fixed amount (which would indeed cause rising prices and major inflation). Instead, total income for most people in the middle-class wouldn't change much, as the basic income they receive will be paid out of a decrease in the effective wages they receive (e.g. through higher income tax).

Sure, landlords could increase rents, but it would be punished by the market since there's no increased demand. UBI would simply give people the security of something to fall back on, stop the rise of a class of working poor by giving workers a stronger bargaining position, and reduce bureaucracy.

I'm definitely not opposed to property tax (tax on wealth seems better than tax on income), but what would it incentivize? The creation of cheaper housing, assuming it's a progressive tax? But wouldn't it also make it even more difficult for young people to get property?

Excuse all the C&P, but it was a paywall thing


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## butchersapron (Nov 23, 2013)

ska invita said:


> this post sounds interesting but i dont understand it - could you explain?
> 
> -






			
				me said:
			
		

> I'll be totally honest. I've no interest at all in the idea - and that's not to disparage anyone else's interest.



Guy standing btw sees the 'precariat' as a threatening force -  a lumpren mess open to right wing manipulation. Not as the highly skilled educated self-centered workforce that it is.


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## Casually Red (Nov 23, 2013)

ive no problem with the basic income bit, but i believe work of some kind should be mandatory


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## ska invita (Nov 23, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Guy standing btw sees the 'precariat' as a threatening force -  a lumpren mess open to right wing manipulation. Not as the highly skilled educated self-centered workforce that it is.


the idea that basic income is attempted to being sold to FT readers here must also play on the fact that they too must feel some sense of threat from the precariat, and basic income might be seen as a sop to that threat whilst allowing capitalism to continue 'unthreatened'. I hope they buy into that and come onside to basic income (which would definitely help get it into law), as I think the mid-term transformative effect on society could be profoundly anti-capitalist.


Casually Red said:


> ive no problem with the basic income bit, but i believe work of some kind should be mandatory


Why do you believe that?


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## ska invita (Nov 23, 2013)

BTW the rate of basic income in this set of figures from page 1 isnt anywhere near high enough to not have to work
http://citizensincome.org/filelibrary/Archived Publications/Student leaflet May 2008.pdf

which is one possible version. the proposed swiss rate is a lot healthier


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## Casually Red (Nov 23, 2013)

ska invita said:


> Why do you believe that?



a variety of reasons . I suppose im looking at it more from the point of view of a socialist based society . Bottom line though there are numerous essential jobs that need doing and pretty much nobody will do them unless forced or co erced to work by some means .


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## Fez909 (Nov 24, 2013)

ska invita said:


> BTW the rate of basic income in this set of figures from page 1 isnt anywhere near high enough to not have to work
> http://citizensincome.org/filelibrary/Archived Publications/Student leaflet May 2008.pdf
> 
> which is one possible version. the proposed swiss rate is a lot healthier



Someone costed a UK basic income here which gave surprising results. Their implementation is £25k and sees everyone earning up to about £31k better off. There's some seriously dodgy maths going on, though, IMO.

Also, this from the Independent was interesting.


> Paying high levels of benefits to the unemployed does not lead to them becoming lazy, or lacking motivation to find a job according to a European-wide study charting the well-being of claimants.


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## Fez909 (Nov 28, 2013)

The Adam Smith Institute calling for a Basic Income now. Not that they have a clue. They start off saying a basic income is needed, then describe a negative income tax system and derision for a true basic income, followed by an admission that perhaps a basic income is what is needed after all.


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## Idris2002 (Nov 29, 2013)

The fact that trash like Hayek and the Adam Smith Institute are sympathetic to Basic Income makes my spidey-sense tingle quite a bit. . .


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## 8ball (Nov 29, 2013)

Idris2002 said:


> The fact that trash like Hayek and the Adam Smith Institute are sympathetic to Basic Income makes my spidey-sense tingle quite a bit. . .


 
It's a panicked reaction to a lack of economic demand.


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## Fez909 (Nov 29, 2013)

There's a campaign to get the EU to look into a basic income for all citizens. If 1m people sign the petititon then they have to investigate it. It's got nowhere near enough signatures (sign here) so won't make it in time, IMO. But today 26 MEPs have come out in support of it and are trying to drum up interest.

Martin EHRENHAUSER, independent (Austria)
Phillippe LAMBERTS, Greens (Belgium)
Nikola VULJANIĆ, Left (Croatian)
Olga SEHNALOVÁ, Social Democrats (Czech Republic)
Tarja CRONBERG, Greens (Finland)
Satu HASSI, Greens (Finland)
Catherine GREZE, Greens (France)
Eva JOLY, Greens (France)
José BOVÉ, Greens (France)
Karima DELLI, Greens (France)
Yves COCHET, Greens (France)
Malika BENARAB-ATTOU, Greens (France)
Michèle RIVASI, Greens (France)
Gerald HÄFNER, Greens (Germany)
Ska KELLER, Greens (Germany)
Nikos CHRISOGELOS, Greens (Greece)
Brian CROWLEY, ALDE (Ireland)
Emer COSTELLO, Social Democrats (Ireland)
Liam AYLWARD, ALDE (Ireland)
Nessa CHILDERS, independent (Ireland)
Sean KELLY, Christian Democrats (Ireland)
Pat the Cope Callagher, ALDE (Ireland)
Georges BACH, Christian Democrats (Luxembourg)
Claude TURMES, Greens (Luxembourg)
Carl SCHLYTER, Greens (Sweden)
Jean LAMBERT, Greens (UK)

source


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## camouflage (Dec 4, 2013)

Casually Red said:


> ive no problem with the basic income bit, but i believe work of some kind should be mandatory



Why do you believe work (I assume you mean supplying labour to market) should be mandatory?


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## camouflage (Dec 4, 2013)

Casually Red said:


> a variety of reasons . I suppose im looking at it more from the point of view of a socialist based society . Bottom line though there are numerous essential jobs that need doing and pretty much nobody will do them unless forced or co erced to work by some means .



right, just saw your answer. I don't think the essential jobs thing necessarily matches up with everybody must work though, I reckon everybody having to work less would be great.

Reminds me of how Keynes thought we'd eventually have a four day week or something. ho-hum.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

the idea that people won't take the grim jobs unless economically coerced is a big fat fucking lie though. Decent recompense for those roles is what is asked.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

Personally I'd love to sail a canoe down the shit tunnels armed with the equipment to clear fatbergs and condom chandeliers. I like the spaces underground. Gotta be good pay though.


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## Casually Red (Dec 4, 2013)

its an essential service and as its unpleasant it should be well paid, very .


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

Casually Red said:


> its an essential service and as its unpleasant it should be well paid, very .




You heard of Parecon? its not by any means a perfect idea but there are encouraging ideas within it.

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=5046313393&searchurl=an=albert+michael&amp;sortby=3&amp;tn=moving+forward+program+for+a+participatory+economy

Participatory economics. Someone here once fumed that it would mean being fined an egg cos you didn't flush the bog but thats reductionist...it could work applied properly


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## Treacle Toes (Dec 4, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> the idea that people won't take the grim jobs unless economically coerced is a big fat fucking lie though. Decent recompense for those roles is what is asked.




Yes. This is in line with the more equal 'valuing' of jobs/work I posted about earlier in the thread.


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## Casually Red (Dec 4, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> the idea that people won't take the grim jobs unless economically coerced is a big fat fucking lie though. Decent recompense for those roles is what is asked.




i dont believe i mentioned economic co ercion


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

Rutita1 said:


> Yes. This is in line with the more equal 'valuing' of jobs/work I posted about earlier in the thread.




you know what happens when you posit these ideas though don't you? someone asks why a brain surgeon should have to empty a bin every now and then.

You are met with a total denial.


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## Santino (Dec 4, 2013)

Casually Red said:


> i dont believe i mentioned economic co ercion


No, you would just withdraw people's means of living.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

Casually Red said:


> i dont believe i mentioned economic co ercion




given that we don't operate work camps that is implicit to your statement.

You know where this is going to end up. More and more people laid off then taken on via the work program to do their former job at dole rates and then fucking cthullu will rise and armed biker gangs will terrorise the few remaining waged people, brother will stab brother for an irradiated grain of rice while sea levels rise and the end of all things comes upon us. The skies will darken and the beasts of the field will roar for justice as they birth three-headed progeny. The fucking minnows will rise from their servitude and kill the stickle backs while we cry 'oh lord oh lord, deliver us from evil' but he won't. He'll just heap more evil, monsanto will copyright all grains and have us all slaving away in dim lit factories fed on a barley and algeal slop and we will fucking thank them for it.


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## Casually Red (Dec 4, 2013)

i sort of admitted a few posts back i was looking at this issue from the point of view of a preference for a socialist society as opposed to an attempt to put another sticking plaster over capitalism . Ive probably jumped into the wrong debate .


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## Casually Red (Dec 4, 2013)

Santino said:


> No, you would just withdraw people's means of living.



you could put it like that


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## Buckaroo (Dec 4, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> given that we don't operate work camps that is implicit to your statement.
> 
> You know where this is going to end up. More and more people laid off then taken on via the work program to do their former job at dole rates and then fucking cthullu will rise and armed biker gangs will terrorise the few remaining waged people, brother will stab brother for an irradiated grain of rice while sea levels rise and the end of all things comes upon us. The skies will darken and the beasts of the field will roar for justice as they birth three-headed progeny. The fucking minnows will rise from their servitude and kill the stickle backs while we cry 'oh lord oh lord, deliver us from evil' but he won't. He'll just heap more evil, monsanto will copyright all grains and have us all slaving away in dim lit factories fed on a barley and algeal slop and we will fucking thank them for it.


 
Barley and algeal slop


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## DotCommunist (Dec 4, 2013)

I've seen the future brother, it is murder


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## Buckaroo (Dec 4, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> I've seen the future brother, it is murder


 
Yeah, it's murder. It will be and it always was.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Dec 5, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> the idea that people won't take the grim jobs unless economically coerced is a big fat fucking lie though. Decent recompense for those roles is what is asked.



Didn't you know? It's only the rich that get motivation by increasing rewards, everyone else requires wage cuts the fear of destitution to get their lazy arses to work.


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## camouflage (Dec 5, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> given that we don't operate work camps that is implicit to your statement.
> 
> You know where this is going to end up. More and more people laid off then taken on via the work program to do their former job at dole rates and then fucking cthullu will rise and armed biker gangs will terrorise the few remaining waged people, brother will stab brother for an irradiated grain of rice while sea levels rise and the end of all things comes upon us. The skies will darken and the beasts of the field will roar for justice as they birth three-headed progeny. The fucking minnows will rise from their servitude and kill the stickle backs while we cry 'oh lord oh lord, deliver us from evil' but he won't. He'll just heap more evil, monsanto will copyright all grains and have us all slaving away in dim lit factories fed on a barley and algeal slop and we will fucking thank them for it.



That's so 2012.


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## ska invita (Dec 31, 2013)

Basic income chat on the Kaiser Report


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## Fez909 (Feb 17, 2014)

Why we should give free money to everyone



> We tend to think that simply giving people money makes them lazy. Yet a wealth of scientific research proves the contrary: free money helps. It is time for a radical reform of the welfare state.


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## Fez909 (Mar 27, 2014)

New Statesman have another article extolling Basic Income as society's medicine. Nothing new there really, except for this claim when talking about robotics doing away with jobs:


> It would be irresponsible to predict that “jobpocalypse” is around the corner. The T-800 is unlikely to replace dentists, rabbis and gym instructors: a recent Oxford University study found that “only” 47 per cent of US employment is at risk of computerisation within the next decade or two.


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## Fez909 (Apr 8, 2014)

Perhaps not the right thread for it, and maybe it deserves a wider audience than this thread's readers (if there are any left  ) but Sweden is about to trial a 6-hour workday for municipal workers. They say it'll boost efficiency, cut down on sick days and save them money.

http://www.thelocal.se/20140408/swedish-workers-to-test-six-hour-work-days

Crucially, the workers will still receive the same amount of money as when working 8 hours. Could be interesting to see how it's reported here. If successful, it could catch the eye of some bosses/govt officials here. Although I imagine it's more likely they'll see the efficiency gains and reduce hours and pay together, rather than keep wages where they were.


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## damnNAFTA (Apr 20, 2014)

Dunno what I think about this but: http://darkai.org/?p=1


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## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 20, 2014)

Never been convinced by the argument that technological advances cause a higher rate of unemployment. New technologies might make certain jobs redundant, but they also open up new industries in which people can find alternate employment.


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## Fez909 (Apr 20, 2014)

cynicaleconomy said:


> Never been convinced by the argument that technological advances cause a higher rate of unemployment. New technologies might make certain jobs redundant, but they also open up new industries in which people can find alternate employment.


Did you read the study linked above from Oxford university?

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/view/1314


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## ItWillNeverWork (Apr 20, 2014)

Fez909 said:


> Did you read the study linked above from Oxford university?
> 
> http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/view/1314



I didn't sorry, no. Reading the abstract however, all the study says is that certain types of job will become unnecessary due to computerisation, but does not make the claim that these jobs will not be replaced by other types of job. Technology was a death knell for horse and carriage makers, but think of all the industries that were made possible by the same technology that ended that profession.


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## Fez909 (Apr 20, 2014)

cynicaleconomy said:


> I didn't sorry, no. Reading the abstract however, all the study says is that certain types of job will become unnecessary due to computerisation, but does not make the claim that these jobs will not be replaced by other types of job. Technology was a death knell for horse and carriage makers, but think of all the industries that were made possible by the same technology that ended that profession.


It's not comparable, though. The technology that replaced horse and carriage makers was still labour intensive and required many many implementations.

Computer technology can be written by a handful of people and one can replace the jobs of millions of workers worldwide.


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## DotCommunist (Apr 20, 2014)

besides, after the era of production line mass factories, the processes became mechanized,people got laid off. Look at detroit- a carworkers city built for thre million that now houses a third of that.


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## DotCommunist (Jun 8, 2014)

saw this in a tangentially related article (an urbs blog had this article hosted)



> Like Weeks, Standing is a proponent of an unconditional basic income—a regular payment provided to every individual regardless of whether or how much they work—as a way of providing income security without locking people into jobs. Yet he still grounds his appeal on the concept of work, now expanded beyond the boundaries of wage labor. “The fact that there is an aversion to the jobs on offer does not mean that . . . people do not want to work,” he argues, for in fact “almost everybody wants to work.” Subsequently, however, he speaks of “rescuing” work from its association with wage labor: “All forms of work should be treated with equal respect, and there should be no presumption that someone not in a job is not working or that someone not working today is an idle scrounger.” This evokes the notion of a social factory in which we contribute various kinds of productive activity that is not directly remunerated, ranging from raising children to coding open source software.
> 
> But no amount of redefinition can escape the association of work with the capitalist ethos of productivism and efficiency. The contrast between work and “idle scrounging” implies that we can measure whether any given activity is productive or useful, by translating it into a common measure. Capitalism has such a measure, monetary value: whatever has value in the market is, by definition, productive. If the critique of capitalism is to get beyond this, it must get beyond the idea that our activities can be subordinated to a single measure of value. Indeed, to demand that time outside of work be truly free is to reject the call to justify its usefulness. This is a central insight of Weeks’ consistent anti-asceticism, which resists any effort to replace the work ethic with some equally homogenizing code that externally validates the organization of our time. Time beyond work should not be for exchange or for use, but for itself. The point, as Weeks puts it, is to “get a life,” as we find ways “to sustain the social worlds necessary for, among other things, production.”




http://thurnundtaxis.blogspot.co.uk/2014_01_01_archive.html


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## Awesome Wells (Jun 15, 2014)

I contend that introducing the citizens income would not just make people more financially secure but would cause a change in social priorities so that people focussed on what was important. We wouldn't need tossers like Nev Wilshire and the likes of his grubby call centre, for example. people could still work there if they wished, but that would only be their choice. Theire would be no coercion on the part of rich and pwoerful people (ie tory governments) to make them do it. That would mean the bosses would have to offer better wages and so we'd get more money paid into the economy from those people. 

Communities could work out how best to do the crappy jobs, deciding who and how and when the toilets and streets get cleaned etc. I think it could work the way a household deals with such jobs. Noone likes the washing up but it gets done because it needs to be done, and it's not then done by someone being chained, through wage slavery, to the kitchen sink for endless soul destroying shifts.

Artistic people could pursue their art and contribute to the culture and perhaps that, if it must be, monetised - people could sell music they've written etc.


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## J Ed (Jun 17, 2014)

Can't believe I have missed this thread up until now.

A basic income has become a very common demand on the left in Spain, it is one of the key policies of Podemos which is forecast to be the third biggest party there in the next election.


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## Treacle Toes (Aug 4, 2014)

> *Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?*
> *An answer to a growing question of the 21st century*




https://medium.com/working-life/why...of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3

Can't be bothered to read?

Some audio and video links here:
http://binews.org/category/videos/


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## Fez909 (Aug 4, 2014)

A guy in Germany, after quitting [paid] work and spending more time with his family and on non-profit work, has realised that UBI is the way forward. So he's set up a Kickstarter to fund someone's income for a year to see how it works. They'll get €1,000 a month for 12 months and there's no expectation on them whatsoever. They'll be chosen at random from those who apply on his site. There's a second Kickstarter on the go now for a 2nd person to get a UBI.

It's obviously not gonna be representative of what would happen if it was rolled out nationally, but an interesting experiement I guess?

http://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 5, 2014)

Fez909 said:


> A guy in Germany, after quitting [paid] work and spending more time with his family and on non-profit work, has realised that UBI is the way forward. So he's set up a Kickstarter to fund someone's income for a year to see how it works. They'll get €1,000 a month for 12 months and there's no expectation on them whatsoever. They'll be chosen at random from those who apply on his site. There's a second Kickstarter on the go now for a 2nd person to get a UBI.
> 
> It's obviously not gonna be representative of what would happen if it was rolled out nationally, but an interesting experiement I guess?
> 
> http://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/



Kind of a crap experiment, tbh. Critics of the BI would reject a positive outcome because it's not a representative sample, and supporters of BI would reject a bad outcome for the same reason. It proves nothing and will convince no one to change their mind. Nice for the lucky person to be picked, however.


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## Fez909 (Aug 5, 2014)

cynicaleconomy said:


> Kind of a crap experiment, tbh. Critics of the BI would reject a positive outcome because it's not a representative sample, and supporters of BI would reject a bad outcome for the same reason. It proves nothing and will convince no one to change their mind. Nice for the lucky person to be picked, however.


True.

It's also a poor pool of people from which to choose the winner as they will all have a personal interest/stake in a BI and would be under pressure to do things which reflect positively on a BI.


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## 8ball (Aug 6, 2014)

If chosen, I'd probably carry on as normal and pay off a chunk of mortgage.  Not sure what that would say about BI...


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## ItWillNeverWork (Aug 6, 2014)

I'd live in the pub for a year. Not sure they would appreciate that either. Still a worthwhile enterprise, if you ask me.


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## Treacle Toes (Aug 8, 2014)

> *A universal income for all adults will feature prominently in the Green party’s pitch to voters in 2015, the party’s leader has said.*
> 
> In an interview with BuzzFeed, party leader Natalie Bennett revealed that the Greens will be campaigning on the policy at the general election next May.
> 
> ...


http://www.buzzfeed.com/jonstone/greens-to-lead-on-universal-basic-income


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## yield (Aug 26, 2014)

The eurozone needs an alternative solution to its economic woes
guardian. Sunday 24 August 2014


> Mark Blyth, economics professor at Brown University, and Eric Lonergan, a London-based hedge-fund manager, have come up with an alternative: print the money but cut out the middlemen and hand the cash straight to the people instead.
> 
> In the US magazine Foreign Affairs, Blyth and Lonergan write that instead of pursuing policies that ramp up asset prices and make the financial system less stable, central banks should write a cheque to every household – or, if they wanted to tackle growing inequality, just to the poorest 80% of households.
> 
> Unlike the banks, consumers, especially the hardest pressed ones, would spend rather than hoard.





> The ECB, in other words, could learn from the QE programmes in the US and the UK and become the guinea pig for what Milton Friedman called helicopter drops of money. Higher interest rates could be used to counter any inflationary pressure, Blyth and Lonergan say.
> 
> Germany, clearly, would try to strangle such a plan at birth. For Angela Merkel, it is redolent of the hyperinflation of 1923. But the numbers do not lie. France: 2006. Spain: 2003. Greece: 2001. Italy: 1997. The eurozone is an economic disaster area.
> 
> Draghi knows that pressure for a different approach is becoming irresistible, which is why he is preparing more unconventional measures. So, say Lonergan and Blyth, why not try something unconventional that might actually work?


More pie in the sky stuff from the guardian. Nice to see it being discussed though.


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## Fez909 (Sep 8, 2014)

Alaska doubling their dividend this year.

$1,800 per person. $7,200 for a family of four. Not bad.

http://binews.org/2014/09/united-states-alaska’s-small-basic-income-likely-to-double-this-year/


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## ska invita (Sep 9, 2014)

Fez909 said:


> Alaska doubling their dividend this year.
> 
> $1,800 per person. $7,200 for a family of four. Not bad.
> 
> http://binews.org/2014/09/united-states-alaska’s-small-basic-income-likely-to-double-this-year/


is that annual?
£1k a year isnt really a basic income - its a windfall


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## Fez909 (Sep 9, 2014)

ska invita said:


> is that annual?
> £1k a year isnt really a basic income - its a windfall


It's the closest thing to a basic income that exists anywhere in the world.

Yes, it's annual, and it's paid without conditions to every man woman and child in the state.


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## ska invita (Sep 18, 2014)

Could an oil-rich independent Scotland afford to pay a ‘citizen’s income’?4
https://www.the-newshub.com/stories...dent-scotland-afford-to-pay-a-citizens-income

^^^not a good article but supposedly the Green Yes group says it could afford to pay a basic income of up to £15,000 a year post-independence. http://www.theguardian.com/politics...alt-oil-drilling-trident-ban-yes-independence


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## Fez909 (Sep 18, 2014)

ska invita said:


> Could an oil-rich independent Scotland afford to pay a ‘citizen’s income’?4
> https://www.the-newshub.com/stories...dent-scotland-afford-to-pay-a-citizens-income
> 
> ^^^not a good article but supposedly the Green Yes group says it could afford to pay a basic income of up to £15,000 a year post-independence. http://www.theguardian.com/politics...alt-oil-drilling-trident-ban-yes-independence


Sounds great but the Greens lack support up there. They only have two MSPs and a handful of councillors. Of course that could change after a yes vote when existing loyalties and voting patterns would likely change.


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## ska invita (Sep 18, 2014)

Fez909 said:


> Sounds great but the Greens lack support up there. They only have two MSPs and a handful of councillors. Of course that could change after a yes vote when existing loyalties and voting patterns would likely change.


whats important about Basic Income to me isnt how close or far it is from being implemented, its that its a new and potentially revolutionising policy around which to struggle for...

There was a time when the 5 day week and the 8 hour day were radical demands but in my lifetime i feel that movement for better conditions has been reduced to pay rises and health and safety - in reality real pay has gone down and working hours up. Basic Income to me is a return to more idealsitic demands where work is something to be ultimately escaped from....

It doesn't matter for me how many Green MPs there are (at least Scotland has proportional representation), more that Basic Income continues its upward trajectory into the public consciousness....

on that note Huffington Post have something on it and Scotland here too



Scottish Independence and Welfare Reform
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-simon-duffy/scottish-independence-welfare-reform_b_5753996.html
The most important failures of the current UK welfare system are set out in a new report published by The Centre for Welfare Reform this week - Let's Scrap the DWP - The Case for Basic Income Security in Scotland.

This report outlines a series of major problems:
1. Deep and growing income inequality - the UK is the 3rd most unequal developed country in the world. The poorest 10% of families must live on less than £100 per week after tax. Middle-income families earn 5 times more, the top 10% earn 14 times more.
2. Aggressively regressive taxation - the poorest 10% pay nearly 50% of their income in tax - 15% more tax than the rest of the population (see the chart below).




3. Perverse and damaging incentives - the tax-benefit system is a confused mess that places marginal tax rates of 100% on the poorest, damages family life, reduces economic efficiency and reduces social contribution.
4. Incoherent systems - the division of the system between tax and benefits, each working to totally different models, and the existence of the ineffective Department of Work and Pensions, has created a stigmatising, chaotic and unmanageable system.

There is no need for this. There is nothing rational or inevitable about the current design of the welfare system; and the current UK Government has already shown that you can radically change the welfare system (although unfortunately its 'reforms' are making the system much worse). So it must certainly be possible for Scotland to develop a better system, and in our report we propose one - Basic Income Security.

(more in the article)


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## Treacle Toes (Sep 20, 2014)

> *Why and How Should We Build a Basic Income for Every Citizen?*
> 
> *By Marshall Brain*
> *marshallbrain.com*
> ...



http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brain20140916


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

The Newsnight interview by the Green's leader has sparked a bit of debate about basic income; most of it bad.

This Guardian article has the director of the Citizen's Income Trust saying it's fundamentally flawed and would make people poorer, no matter what level it was set at. I don't get why someone pro-BI would make such statements, and if he truly believes that, why is he still in that post?

His proposals could be explained much more easily by just saying, "unemployment benefit will now not be dependent on you looking for a job".


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## DotCommunist (Jan 28, 2015)

I saw that interview, ken clarke looked like he had quietly crapped himself and as a posh voiced clearly corpulent trencher-hero was ill placed to say things. Dianne abbot was more cogent than him, and she is a fucking joke.


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## ska invita (Jan 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> The Newsnight interview by the Green's leader has sparked a bit of debate about basic income; most of it bad.
> 
> This Guardian article has the director of the Citizen's Income Trust saying it's fundamentally flawed and would make people poorer, no matter what level it was set at. I don't get why someone pro-BI would make such statements, and if he truly believes that, why is he still in that post?
> 
> His proposals could be explained much more easily by just saying, "unemployment benefit will now not be dependent on you looking for a job".


what the CIT man is saying is that it would be more expensive than the current system (by 24billlion was it?) to roll it out to everyone in the population without means testing , and it would also place an unfair burden of tax on the poorest to achieve it, unless the way tax is collected is changed + make basic income means tested so rich people don't automatically receive it....which without looking at the details sounds plausible.

It doesnt mean its a bad idea, nor do I think they've calculated the way that the Basic Income money would stimulate the economy (and increase tax takings). I haven't got time atm to scrutinise their latest figures...

(BTW Bennetts interview was on Sunday Politics and Ken Clarke was on Newnight)


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> make basic income means tested so rich people don't automatically receive it....


No to this.

One of the fundamental aspects of a _universal_ basic income is everybody gets it. It makes it easier to administer (therefore cheaper), and it increases support for it. By means testing you make it a welfare payment with all the baggage and resentment that comes with that term.


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## ska invita (Jan 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> No to this.
> 
> One of the fundamental aspects of a _universal_ basic income is everybody gets it. It makes it easier to administer (therefore cheaper), and it increases support for it. By means testing you make it a welfare payment with all the baggage and resentment that comes with that term.


i follow the logic and it seems that this is what CIT previously costed, but it seems they now think it would be cheaper to means test it than go universal.
they also no longer think that £70 a week would replace all other 'benefits' and so the beurocracy would have to remain anyway to administer other money given out

in terms of the cost of administration i reckon you could make it simple and still cut off rich people, by making it so everyone is illegible, but in order to receive it you have to go to you local job center and tick a box on a computer screen there - a simple yes or no thing. Lots of snobs wouldnt bother. The principle of universality would remain....


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> i follow the logic and it seems that this is what CIT previously costed, but it seems they now think it would be cheaper to means test it than go universal.
> they also no longer think that £70 a week would replace all other 'benefits' and so the beurocracy would have to remain anyway to administer other money given out
> 
> in terms of the cost of administration i reckon you could make it simple and still cut off rich people, by making it so everyone is illegible, but in order to receive it you have to go to you local job center and tick a box on a computer screen there - a simple yes or no thing. Lots of snobs wouldnt bother. The principle of universality would remain....


It's not just about making a BI easy/cheap to administer, it's the replacing of all other benefits because they are no longer needed. 

You were talking revolutionary changes to society a few pages back, and now it's just a handout to people who sign on at the job centre? What's changed?


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> i follow the logic and it seems that this is what CIT previously costed, but it seems they now think it would be cheaper to means test it than go universal.
> they also no longer think that £70 a week would replace all other 'benefits' and so the beurocracy would have to remain anyway to administer other money given out
> 
> in terms of the cost of administration i reckon you could make it simple and still cut off rich people, by making it so everyone is illegible, but in order to receive it you have to go to you local job center and tick a box on a computer screen there - a simple yes or no thing. Lots of snobs wouldnt bother. The principle of universality would remain....


It's not just about making a BI easy/cheap to administer, it's the replacing of all other benefits.

You were talking revolutionary changes to society a few pages back, and now it's just a handout to people who sign on at the job centre?


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## ska invita (Jan 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> It's not just about making a BI easy/cheap to administer, it's the replacing of all other benefits because they are no longer needed.


Some people get more than £70 in benefits - a £70 Basic Income wouldnt cover that - what about housing benefit for example? what about childcare?


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> Some people get more than £70 in benefits - a £70 Basic Income wouldnt cover that - what about housing benefit for example? what about childcare?


If a basic income wouldn't cover that then it needs to be higher.


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## ska invita (Jan 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> If a basic income wouldn't cover that then it needs to be higher.


yeah but Housing Benefit is hugely variable - hundreds of pounds a month for some.


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## Fez909 (Jan 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> yeah but Housing Benefit is hugely variable - hundreds of pounds a month for some.


It's been discussed plenty of times already in this thread. Here's my last reply on it. 


Fez909 said:


> Also, the problem of housing costs differing have been discussed and the universal/same payment actually solves that problem by keeping money in areas with housing but no jobs and removing the economic incentive to migrate to cities and areas of high employment which inevitably means higher housing costs. By reversing this trend, perhaps the jobs would spread out too, so in time we'd have a more harmonious balance between different regions, instead of everything being concentrated in the South East.


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## ska invita (Jan 28, 2015)

I will need to reread the thread and see what ive said so far  
never fun reading old posts i find
ultimately i don't have the skills or energy to create a national spending plan so you have to give some trust to those who have gone away and done the sums - as the Greens have found out this isnt the safest thing to do and sums can be gotten seemingly very wrong!


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## 8ball (Jan 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> No to this.
> 
> One of the fundamental aspects of a _universal_ basic income is everybody gets it. It makes it easier to administer (therefore cheaper), and it increases support for it. By means testing you make it a welfare payment with all the baggage and resentment that comes with that term.


 
See threads on child benefit for further fleshing out of these arguments...


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## Fez909 (Feb 3, 2015)

ska invita said:


> ultimately i don't have the skills or energy to create a national spending plan


How about 'helping' to create one?

I think I want to have a go at this, and although it seems a massive task, it shouldn't be that difficult to get in the rough area. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of people willing to correct my figures/method as soon as I go wrong 

So, here's v1.0 of the method:

1. Sum up all benefits, payments, grants, subsidies, that are paid out by the state to private individuals
2. Find out the total of all taxes currently collected by the state
3. Investigate the cost of administrating the benefits from point 1 and sum it
4. Look into the 'tax gap' - the difference between the amount of tax that should be collected but isn't, due to fraud, corruption, etc
5. Look at the previous studies on basic incomes and their effect on working hours, and therefore tax takings. Apply this reduction to our total from point 2
6. Look at previous studies on basic incomes and their effect on public service demands, such as hospital visits. Use these figures to look at our spending on public services and add the projected savings to the sum from point 1. (Not everything will be a saving - education will be in higher demand so there will be costs rather than savings here)
7. Try to find the highest possible amount of benefits somebody could be in receipt of (most expensive part of London, on HB, multiple kids, etc, etc) as well as the likelihood someone will be on this. Find the average amount of benefits received. Find the lowest. Graph it.
8. Use the graph from 7 to calculate how much the universal basic income would need to be set at to cover 90%, 95% and 99.5% of the population.
9. Use the calculations above to see what we could afford to pay using the current budget/tax regime. How far off is it from the numbers generated in point 8?

Those things are all fairly doable, even as an economic dunce, I reckon. Nothing in there is difficult to calculate, and there's not too many assumptions. The difficult bit will be point 7 I reckon, finding the average amount of benefits paid out.

Once you've calculated those, then we could play around with tax rates and see what that does to the figures, but then you're getting into much harder to predict territory.

Any glaring omissions/objections so far?


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## DotCommunist (Feb 3, 2015)

Not sure about calculations based on point 7 I'd rather tie it to the average working wage then go from there
Because regional wage and housing vary so very wildly, you'd end up with people living like kings up north where a can of coke is still 50p and people in the cities just scraping by 

that would not be right or fair


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## Fez909 (Feb 3, 2015)

DotCommunist said:


> Not sure about calculations based on point 7 I'd rather tie it to the average working wage then go from there
> Because regional wage and housing vary so very wildly, you'd end up with people living like kings up north where a can of coke is still 50p and people in the cities just scraping by
> 
> that would not be right or fair


It's redistributive, so it's fair.

And people would follow the money so services would be eased in the South East and eventually costs would equalise between the regions. Or tend towards equalization, at least.


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## BigTom (Feb 3, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> How about 'helping' to create one?
> 
> I think I want to have a go at this, and although it seems a massive task, it shouldn't be that difficult to get in the rough area. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of people willing to correct my figures/method as soon as I go wrong
> 
> ...


7 would be easy, as all benefit payments are recorded, so the data you need exists, you just have to get it
4 and 6 on the other hand will just be guesses, for tax avoidance that's how much it is, how much you can reclaim and how much it'll cost to reclaim it. For cost/benefit to other services you're really in unknown territory - how many BI schemes have existed and how similar are/were the countries/communities they ran in? I think it'll be very, very sketchy here and may be better to ignore this factor entirely.


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## ska invita (Feb 3, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Any glaring omissions/objections so far?


go for it fez!

Paul mason scribbled some numbers down on the back of an envelope this week : http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ic-income-would-kill-off-low-paid-menial-jobs   worth a glance

This is the trickiest one i think:
5. Look at the previous studies on basic incomes and their effect on working hours, and therefore tax takings. Apply this reduction to our total from point 2

No other country has implemented Basic Income on such a scale, and the UK is a very complex test case

unknowables include:
what would happen to inflation?
do people work less or the same? Ive heard claims for both yes and no
do menial jobs become better paid?
what happens to migration? can someone from Spain come to the UK and immediately get Basic Income?

4. Look into the 'tax gap' - the difference between the amount of tax that should be collected but isn't, due to fraud, corruption, etc

Tax throws up lots of issues
...is VAT fair? Do we want it?
Should personal allowances continue to rise? If your first 10k isnt taxed and you get 6k for BI should the personal allowance come down to 4k?
If you increase the top rate of tax does it really work in collection tax revenues?
Most tax avoidance is legal - closing those loopholes is pure politics. Lets say you can close the loopholes, that doesnt mean you would get all the tax expected, as many of the biggest companies would continue to tax dodge elsewhere


Not trying to put you off - I still think its a useful exercise to try and cost it, but its a much harder thing to pin down the revenue needed to pay for it, or to account for potential inflation.


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## Fez909 (Feb 3, 2015)

ska invita said:


> go for it fez!
> 
> Paul mason scribbled some numbers down on the back of an envelope this week : http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ic-income-would-kill-off-low-paid-menial-jobs   worth a glance
> 
> ...


Cheers, will take a look at that article.

At work so can't respond properly to this, but just on the 'tax gap' - HMRC say that it was £34bn in the year ending April 2013. Crucially, this doesn't include the legal avoidance you mention, and is easily recoverable with 1) enough tax inspectors and 2) a government that wants to collect such tax.


----------



## Fez909 (Feb 3, 2015)

And Richard Murphy of Tax Research puts the tax gap _including_ agressive avoidance and evasion at £119.4bn (pdf) in 2013/14.


----------



## 8ball (Feb 3, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> It's redistributive, so it's fair.


----------



## ska invita (Feb 3, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Cheers, will take a look at that article.



here it is to  save a click:
"If you do a fag-packet calulation, you can see why in the long-run the only form the basic income could take is that of a radical challenge to market economics. (I stress what follows is conjecture, and not an attempt to number crunch today’s party-political proposals).

If you paid every adult in Britain – including pensioners – say, £6,000 a year, with no requirement to seek work and no means test, it would cost around £290bn a year.

You would abolish the basic state pension (currently around £6,000) and basic unemployment benefits, keeping only benefits targeted to extra needs such as child support or disability, which come to around £30bn now, so the overall cost might come to £320bn a year.
That is a huge amount of money. The current welfare bill in Britain is £167bn – of which two- thirds goes to pensioners. Its eats around 23% of government spending. A true, subsistence level basic income would close to double that. But it is imaginable, in the short to medium term, if you factor in the benefits.

The first would be to eradicate low-paid menial work. Why slave 10 hours a day with mop and bucket for £12k when you get £6k for free? Corporations would rebalance their business models towards a high pay, stable consumption, low-ish profit world, and the tax take would rise as a result. All tax relief for the poor would end.

The second benefit, though less tangible, would come to the spiralling healthcare budgets of western societies. Drugs are dear, collaborative networks of peer educators and self-help groups come for free, at least in theory, once everyone is being paid simply to exist, and has the time and freedom to contribute. This is the view taken by the prophets of peer-to-peer economics, who envisage a new, collaborative production sector. My fag-packet logic tells me it would mean tens of billions in lower healthcare costs, and savings in other areas too.
The rest of the fiscal gap would be closed through raising tax – so this is not a cheap or easy solution. It would be a pathway to a different kind of economy. But for both left and right it would challenge the last vestiges of what Gorz called “the utopia based on work” which has sustained us for two centuries, but may no longer.


----------



## 8ball (Feb 3, 2015)

I'd agree that it could only exist (as a liveable allowance) in the form of a radical challenge to (our current form of "sort-of") market economics.


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## Argonia (Feb 8, 2015)

Just want to express full support for it. In future it may seem self evident to people that a society with a basic income is a fundamentally civilise one and one without isn't.


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## Treacle Toes (Feb 8, 2015)

Welcome!


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## smokedout (Feb 8, 2015)

ska invita said:


> The current welfare bill in Britain is £167bn – of which two- thirds goes to pensioners. Its eats around 23% of government spending. A true, subsistence level basic income would close to double that. But it is imaginable, in the short to medium term, if you factor in the benefits.



he seems to be ignoring tax credits and child benefit with that figure, the true cost is closer to £200bn.  Housing is where it falls down and just saying but it's redistributive isn;t very helpful if it would immediately make everyone poor in the south east homeless, that is not a viable transition.  A Basic Income has to come with a guarantee of housing, which would mean a perfectly achievable mass house building project which promised a house on social rent, or an interest free cost of build and service/maintenance charge - that could be revenue neutral and is worth fighting for on its own.  I'd also argue things like Disability Living Allowance and Child Benefit be kept as they are, no need for tinkering there, it could also come with an out of work sickness/disability premium, assessed as it was before, by doctors signing people off sick - at current rates this would only be about 30 quid a week more than the basic income so less contentious.  Instead of means testing it goes to everyone and gets clawed back through higher rates tax payers and getting rid of the minimum income tax threshold.

thats the framework, its viable, just depends how much you can get away with taking from the rich balanced against how much you set the minimum at, just a question of setting up a simple model that lets you input figures eg basic income rate, basic income tax rate, top/mid tax rates - its got to be more than £70 a week otherwise as has been pointed out, all youre really arguing for is the dole, as it was back in the day when they left you alone.

but that is a fight that has to be won first, scrapping conditionality for benefits, along with housing for everyone who needs it are both necessary for a basic income to function and are both demands that are building, so rather than getting lost in utopia if you want this I'd start there


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## SpookyFrank (Feb 9, 2015)

smokedout said:


> I'd also argue things like Disability Living Allowance be kept as they are, no need for tinkering there



DLA is already gone is it not?

But semantics aside, I do think any kind of universal basic income would need to be augmented with means tested benefits in certain cases, disability and illness being the most obvious ones.

I also think simply scrapping conditionality for JSA would be a step in the right direction. No government would do it in the present climate because nobody wants to be 'soft on welfare' (or as we used to call it, nice to the poor) but it probably wouldn't even cost that much. Get rid of all the useless and expensive welfare-to-work programs and all the huge bouns payments to contractors that they entail, remove a whole swathe of admin, replace the current jobcentre bullies with people whose sole job is to provide support with job hunting to those who actually want or need it.

And quite apart from the immediate costs, there would be savings and general improvements to society elsewhere. Homelessness services, mental health services, the criminal justice system; these would all see a drop in their workloads. With the state no longer able to force people into zero-hour jobs or joke apprenticeships, employers would have to raise their game in terms of the conditions they offer their staff. What we currently have is a situation where employers are actively encouraged to discard staff at a regular basis because short-term staff have fewer entitlements, but the people being discarded are the ones who are blamed for this situation and, in effect, punished for it. So universal jobseekers allowance for anyone out of work, and universal in-work entitlements regardless of whether you've been there a week or a lifetime. Simple. Even if the frontline cost is higher the benefits to the economy as a whole would dwarf those costs.

Why is the labour party not willing to make these sorts of arguments? Maybe in the present climate you can't win an election with a generous welfare policy, but that's because nobody is putting in the legwork making these arguments to the public and trying to change public understanding of how welfare is actually good for the general public and not just a drain on resources that exists only for sentimental reasons. And the reason they wont make the arguments is that they don't believe in them, because they're all just Thatcher-lites. And they've got the fucking cheek to call themselves the Labour party.

That turned into a bit of a rant didn't it? It all just makes me so cross though


----------



## 8ball (Feb 9, 2015)

smokedout said:


> ... scrapping conditionality for benefits, along with housing for everyone who needs it are both necessary for a basic income to function and are both demands that are building...


 
Really?  I'm not seeing anything like this.

A few mumblings and a few Mums who have managed to delay the machinations of the market is all I've seen on the basic income and housing front.  And conditionality for benefits seems to be rapidly going in the wrong direction.


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## 8ball (Feb 9, 2015)

SpookyFrank said:


> That turned into a bit of a rant didn't it? It all just makes me so cross though


 
 

Agree with all that.  RIP any accurately-named Labour party (which, tbf, is going back quite some way).


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## SpookyFrank (Feb 9, 2015)

When you see those government spending pie charts with a section for 'JSA' I wonder if that section includes only the actual money given to actual claimants or if it includes all the welfare-to-work shite, including kickbacks, admin costs and all that?


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## Greebo (Feb 9, 2015)

SpookyFrank said:


> DLA is already gone is it not? <<snip>


No. Being phased out and replaced with PIP - which'll do more or less the same thing, but with stricter criteria.  

The way that the various income-related benefits interract, particulalry in joint housholds, is byzantine. 

Now add on the complex arrangement of exemptions and discounts; if I were to take any work at all, with nothing else in my (and VP's) current situation changing, I would have to earn over £50,000 per year just to break even.  This is because most of the exemptions, rebates and discounts would almost immediately go, and I'd have to pay for somebody to do what I'm around to do.


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## SpookyFrank (Feb 9, 2015)

Greebo said:


> No. Being phased out and replaced with PIP - which'll do more or less the same thing, but with stricter criteria.



Typical. I suppose 'restricting access to DLA' sounds a lot worse than, 'replacing DLA with a new benefit with a more newspeak-sounding name that will be more fit for purpose and blah blah blah lots of bullshit to cover up the fact that what we're actually doing is restricting access to DLA'


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## Greebo (Feb 9, 2015)

SpookyFrank said:


> Typical. I suppose 'restricting access to DLA' sounds a lot worse than, 'replacing DLA with a new benefit with a more newspeak-sounding name that will be more fit for purpose and blah blah blah lots of bullshit to cover up the fact that what we're actually doing is restricting access to DLA'


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## SpookyFrank (Feb 9, 2015)

Greebo said:


> Now add on the complex arrangement of exemptions and discounts; if I were to take any work at all, with nothing else in my (and VP's) current situation changing, I would have to earn over £50,000 per year just to break even.  This is because most of the exemptions, rebates and discounts would almost immediately go, and I'd have to pay for somebody to do what I'm around to do.



Fear not, soon Universal Credit will be here to make the situation even worse.


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## Greebo (Feb 9, 2015)

SpookyFrank said:


> Fear not, soon Universal Credit will be here to make the situation even worse.


It already is, in some areas.  And the benefits cap is hot on its heels, or will that come first?  

Either way, it's bad news.


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## SpookyFrank (Feb 9, 2015)

Greebo said:


> It already is, in some areas.  And the benefits cap is hot on its heels, or will that come first?
> 
> Either way, it's bad news.



I thought UC wasn't being implemented for couples or people with dependants yet?


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## Greebo (Feb 9, 2015)

SpookyFrank said:


> I thought UC wasn't being implemented for couples or people with dependants yet?


You don't get it do you?

You have to start planning for the worst case because with the DWP you can't rely on them not doing something purely because it doesn't bloody well make sense!    The same goes for ministers making the decisions which affect benefits.


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## ska invita (Jun 26, 2015)

A Dutch City Will Start Experimenting with Unconditional Basic Income This Summer
http://www.futurism.com/links/view/...-with-unconditional-basic-income-this-summer/


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## Fez909 (Jun 28, 2015)

Robots are coming for the brickies


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## Fez909 (Jun 28, 2015)

Finnish government commits to Basic Income experiment.


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## ska invita (Jun 28, 2015)

Thought you might like the new Verso Books bag Fez909


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## butchersapron (Jun 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> Finnish government commits to Basic Income experiment.


Doesn't sound like that much of a commitment. And if anyone wanted to see how a generic basic income policy can be integrated with welfare to work measures and other neo-liberal crap, well, just keep your eye on this.


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## butchersapron (Jun 28, 2015)

ska invita said:


> Thought you might like the new Verso Books bag Fez909


Disgusting - charge 25 quid for books that cost you fuck all to produce, give nothing back to the writers, hound people who criticise and  then ... _pose_.


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## Fez909 (Jun 28, 2015)

butchersapron said:


> Doesn't sound like that much of a commitment. And if anyone wanted to see how a generic basic income policy can be integrated with welfare to work measures and other neo-liberal crap, well, just keep your eye on this.


If it's a welfare to work model, then it's not a basic income. One of the principles of a basic income is everyone gets it, no matter what.


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## butchersapron (Jun 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> If it's a welfare to work model, then it's not a basic income. One of the principles of a basic income is everyone gets it, no matter what.


That's the abstract model yes. Are you only interested in that? Are there no conditions under which it could be utilised by neo-liberalism? We know it's been supported by some leading neo-liberals since kick off don't we? How come? Given whose given this rather wet committment, do you imagine it will the basic income policy of abstract models, or given the recent devlopment of workare and other attacks on the welfare state in finland that it might be something a wee bit different? Given that there already exist conditional basic-income 'benefits' in part of finland.


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## Fez909 (Jun 28, 2015)

butchersapron said:


> That's the abstract model yes. Are you only interested in that? Are there no conditions under which it could be utilised by neo-liberalism? We know it's been supported by some leading neo-liberals since kick off don't we? How come? Given whose given this rather wet committment, do you imagine it will the basic income policy of abstract models, or given the recent devlopment of workare and other attacks on the welfare state in finland that it might be something a wee bit different? Given that there already exist conditional basic-income 'benefits' in part of finland.


True, there might be something _called _a basic income that neo-libs support. But that's no different to the current welfare model, really, or even Universal Credit. There'd be nothing stopping the Tories from renaming UC Basic Income and wouldn't require any laws to change. Doesn't mean it's a basic income.


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## butchersapron (Jun 28, 2015)

Fez909 said:


> True, there might be something _called _a basic income that neo-libs support. But that's no different to the current welfare model, really, or even Universal Credit. There'd be nothing stopping the Tories from renaming UC Basic Income and wouldn't require any laws to change. Doesn't mean it's a basic income.


Indeed. i think that's exactly where i came in earlier today.


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## Fez909 (Jun 28, 2015)

butchersapron said:


> Indeed. i think that's exactly where i came in earlier today.


Fair enough.

I'll do some reading to see if I can find out what they mean when they talk about it in Finland. It was mentioned a fair bit before the election so there should be something written on it, somewhere.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 28, 2015)

butchersapron said:


> Disgusting - charge 25 quid for books that cost you fuck all to produce, give nothing back to the writers, hound people who criticise and  then ... _pose_.



Back when I was mobile enough to meander round bookshops unaided, I used to make it a point (if I shoplifted at all) to shoplift Verso books (plus a couple of other mainstream publishers). Got my first copy of "The Enemy Within" like that.


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## ska invita (Aug 20, 2015)

*Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system*
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33977636*


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## J Ed (Oct 20, 2015)

The Podemos party in Spain has proposed a basic income of €600 per month for those with no income and a sort of reduced basic income for those who are in work but who do not earn over €900


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## BigTom (Oct 21, 2015)

It's not a basic income then is it? Isn't the point of a basic income that it's paid to everyone regardless of earnings?


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## J Ed (Oct 21, 2015)

BigTom said:


> It's not a basic income then is it? Isn't the point of a basic income that it's paid to everyone regardless of earnings?



It's what they are calling it.


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## DotCommunist (Oct 21, 2015)

its more decent welfare provision and a form of in work benefit not all that far from tax credits to my mind, although I can see why its useful to sell it under that label of BI.

I don't know the cost of living in spain so am unsure as to just how far 600 euro would go.


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## J Ed (Nov 14, 2015)

.


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## imposs1904 (Nov 15, 2015)

ska invita said:


> Thought you might like the new Verso Books bag Fez909




that's really naff. their intern must do better.


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## ska invita (Nov 15, 2015)

imposs1904 said:


> that's really naff. their intern must do better.


its taken from the cover of this book VersoBooks.com




A major new manifesto for a high-tech future free from work
Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite.

_Inventing the Future_ is a bold new manifest0 for life _after_ capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

*Reviews*

“Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams' project dares to propose a different way of thinking and acting. Given the fizzling of the Occupy moment, a radical rethinking of the anarchic approach is badly needed but just not happening. This book could do a lot of work in getting that rethink going.”
– Doug Henwood, author of _Wall Street_


“A powerful book: it not only shows us how the postcapitalist world of rapidly improving technology could make us free, but it also shows us how we can organise to get there. This is a must-read.”
– Paul Mason, author of _Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future_


“Srnicek and Williams demonstrate how a sustainable economic future is less a question of means than of imagination. The postcapitalist world they envision is utterly attainable, if we can remember that we have been inventing the economy all along.”
– Douglas Rushkoff, author of _Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now_


“_Inventing the Future_ is exactly what we need right now. With immense patience and care, it sets out a clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society. Equally importantly, it lays out a plausible programme which can take us from 24/7 capitalist immiseration to a world free of work.”
– Mark Fisher, author of _Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?_


“A conceptual launch pad for a new socialist imagination…”
– Mike Davis, author of _Planet of Slums_


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## imposs1904 (Nov 15, 2015)

ska invita said:


> its taken from the cover of this book VersoBooks.com
> 
> 
> 
> ...



God, that makes it naffer. My apologies to the Verso intern.

Was there not enough room on the bag (and book) for some gushing blurb from Edward Bellamy?


" _Inventing the Future, the book I'd wish I'd written_ . . . shit, wait a minute, am I getting royalties from these guys?"
			   - Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward


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## ska invita (Nov 15, 2015)

imposs1904 said:


> - Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward


Never heard of it, but looks interesting...does it hold up to reading today?


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## imposs1904 (Nov 15, 2015)

ska invita said:


> Never heard of it, but looks interesting...does it hold up to reading today?



It's been a few years since I read it but I remember it being a  bit dull, tbh, but, then, I think most utopian type literature is. (I never did finish News From Nowhere.) Had a quick look at its wiki page and I'd known it was popular when it was published, but I didn't know it was the publishing sensation it was when it was originally published.


----------



## bi0boy (Dec 8, 2015)

Jeremy Warner is in favour, apart from the downside of being infested by riffraff from the rest of Europe.

Paying all UK citizens £155 a week may be an idea whose time has come


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## ska invita (Dec 27, 2015)

Dutch city plans to pay all citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK

“We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam.

Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht.


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## Fez909 (Dec 29, 2015)

Switzerland vote date set

BIEN-CH Newsletter : The 5th of June, 2016, we vote!


----------



## J Ed (Jan 2, 2016)




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## LeslieB (Jan 2, 2016)

bi0boy said:


> Jeremy Warner is in favour, apart from the downside of being infested by riffraff from the rest of Europe.
> 
> Paying all UK citizens £155 a week may be an idea whose time has come



Interesting article, spoilt by the use of the word riff-raff. I never realised Finnish unemployment was so high.


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## Duncan2 (Jan 3, 2016)

Just watched Guy Standing video posted by J Ed.He is clearly angry that the 'Precariat' live lives characterised by  wholly unwarranted deference to grasping employers,lives dominated by fear.He may very well be right in my view that  Citizens Basic Income could be the antidote.But who is going to judge the success or failure of the 'pilot-schemes' he wishes to see implemented?Probably the very neo-liberal elites who are benefitting most from the new deference.It won't happen-unfortunately.


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## ska invita (Jan 3, 2016)

The problem with pilot schemes is that it seems to be the effect of basic income can only be judged if it is implemented nation wide ... And then there's the issue of what rate of income is effective and affordable.


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## butchersapron (Jan 3, 2016)

Standing takes the position that the 'precariat' are a potential fascist block of human dust waiting to happen, He confuses things like underclass (leaving aside the use of that term for now, i'm just using it to stand for un/underemployed in sink estates, low-income areas with little or no possibility of moving 'upwards', facing increasing absolute poverty, policed by the social security policy measures and no longer (or never) socialised by work (ugh)) with the precariat (skilled people on temp contracts, having to pay themselves to upgrade skills etc, often choosing to work min hours in lieu of high wages+fighting over relatively high rates of pay on individual basis). By confusing the two he ends up arguing that the former must be 'brought on board' with the serious moral society that people like him represent before they bring us all down - and that basic income may be one way to try and do this. It's paternalist top-down state-led nonsense rather a class imposition on capital and i would suggest those coming at it from the latter perspective (of it a moment of our power) use him very warily.


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## Duncan2 (Jan 3, 2016)

Maybe this is covered up-thread but is CBI in any way compatible with EU membership? Could I as a UK  citizen move to Finland in a week or so and live out my days on their CBI and if not how are they able to prevent that?


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## ViolentPanda (Jan 4, 2016)

Duncan2 said:


> Maybe this is covered up-thread but is CBI in any way compatible with EU membership? Could I as a UK  citizen move to Finland in a week or so and live out my days on their CBI and if not how are they able to prevent that?



You'd need to look into whether the UK has a reciprocal welfare agreement with Finland (we do with about half of other EU members), and if so, what is covered.


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## Duncan2 (Jan 4, 2016)

ViolentPanda said:


> You'd need to look into whether the UK has a reciprocal welfare agreement with Finland (we do with about half of other EU members), and if so, what is covered.


Thanks VP I had rather naively assumed that my entitlements to welfare would be the same as those of a Finnish person just by virtue of the fact that we are all citizens of the EU.If ,as seems to be the case,member states can restrict welfare payments to their own nationals I can't see what would prevent Cameron from preventing EU migrants to the UK from claiming benefits in the first four years?I may be confusing separate issues here.


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## ViolentPanda (Jan 4, 2016)

Duncan2 said:


> Thanks VP I had rather naively assumed that my entitlements to welfare would be the same as those of a Finnish person just by virtue of the fact that we are all citizens of the EU.If ,as seems to be the case,member states can restrict welfare payments to their own nationals I can't see what would prevent Cameron from preventing EU migrants to the UK from claiming benefits in the first four years?I may be confusing separate issues here.



If I want to live in Germany, I lose access to some specific benefits (ESA being the main one), but keep equivalent access to others (the big stumbling block for me is losing access to free-at-source medical treatment and free prescriptions, or I'd already be living there) as we have a reciprocity agreement for basic benefits.
When Cameron sounds off, he (and the rest of  the scumbags) always imply that EU migrants to the UK are able to claim the full panoply of benefits from the off,and that they'll legislate to stop that. The reality is that if you're, for example, Hungarian or Lithuanian, you're only entitled to Income Support, have to wait 6 months before you can claim anything but "hardship payments", and have no recourse to public housing or funding for housing for (IIRC) 2 years. Similar for Poles, I believe. As usual, the Tories are talking up something as a problem that isn't actually a problem, in order to deflect attention from other things (such as Osborne's dogshit-poor management of the economy).


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## bi0boy (Jan 5, 2016)

It's needed because of the robot trucks: Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck — Basic income


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## Duncan2 (Jan 5, 2016)

bi0boy said:


> It's needed because of the robot trucks: Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck — Basic income


Very much doubt whether any of us will live to see truly driver-less trucks.A pity because it would be great to see the robot trucks arguing the toss in court as to whose incompetence caused the expensive accident.


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## weltweit (Jan 13, 2016)

Just to say, BBC Money Box Live today was a program about Basic Income. I didn't catch all of it but it will soon be available on their website if indeed it isn't already. I think it is already available actually:
Money Box Live - A Basic Income, Money Box - BBC Radio 4


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## ska invita (Jan 13, 2016)

weltweit said:


> Just to say, BBC Money Box Live today was a program about Basic Income. I didn't catch all of it but it will soon be available on their website if indeed it isn't already. I think it is already available actually:
> Money Box Live - A Basic Income, Money Box - BBC Radio 4


moderate and broadly  positive analysis


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## Fez909 (Jan 21, 2016)

EDM for "reserch into basic income" tabled by Caroline Lucas

British parliament to consider motion on universal basic income


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## LeslieB (Jan 21, 2016)

It will be interesting to see if Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell sign it.....


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## Fez909 (Jan 21, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> It will be interesting to see if Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell sign it.....


Just wrote to my MP to request that she signs it.


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## LeslieB (Jan 21, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> Just wrote to my MP to request that she signs it.


I think I'll do the same.


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## Fez909 (Jan 21, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> I think I'll do the same.


You probably already know about it but WriteToThem makes it very easy


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## Duncan2 (Jan 21, 2016)

Mine's a cunt but I wrote to him anyway thanks Fez909


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## LeslieB (Jan 21, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> You probably already know about it but WriteToThem makes it very easy



Yes I do. I'll get onto it in the morning. Does anyone know the EDM number?


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## Fez909 (Jan 21, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> Yes I do. I'll get onto it in the morning. Does anyone know the EDM number?



Early day motion 974 - BASIC INCOME


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## J Ed (Feb 10, 2016)

Great British Benefits Handout- CH5 but actually quite good!!


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## Idris2002 (Mar 3, 2016)

Evgeny Morozov (for it is he) skewers the techbro's attempt to use Basic Income as a Trojan horse for their obnoxious "libertarian" bullshit:

Silicon Valley talks a good game on ‘basic income’, but its words are empty | Evgeny Morozov


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## Fez909 (Mar 7, 2016)

Canada doing another experiment: Canada plans to experiment with giving people unconditional free money


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## J Ed (Mar 7, 2016)

Idris2002 said:


> Evgeny Morozov (for it is he) skewers the techbro's attempt to use Basic Income as a Trojan horse for their obnoxious "libertarian" bullshit:
> 
> Silicon Valley talks a good game on ‘basic income’, but its words are empty | Evgeny Morozov



This is absolutely true. The prospect of a basic income _one day _is increasingly used to justify politics in the here and now which are destroying lives. When you confront people about the actual consequences of these politics these days you often get the reply, 'it will all be fine after basic income' as if the ruling class is more, rather than less, likely to give us a basic income as we become increasingly incapable of forcing them to do so.


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## ska invita (Mar 7, 2016)

I've never heard a privatising, service cutting politician use basic income as a fig leaf... The only time I hear it mentioned as a counterbalance is by panicky right winger economists who understand the contradictions of capitalism, and see which way the wind is blowing.....

As to the forcing of basic income it's going to be failed central bankers and other economic geniuses who encourage it, rather than the population at large


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## Treacle Toes (Mar 7, 2016)

ska invita said:


> As to the forcing of basic income it's going to be failed central bankers and other economic geniuses who encourage it, rather than the population at large



Can you explain this thinking further please.


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## ska invita (Mar 7, 2016)

Its already happening... There are already calls for it from the right.

 The global economy is flatlining...growth is shrinking...everything the central bankers and other figures who have their hands on the levers of the economy do is failing to create the growth their own models predict.

There is a real fear that the entre global economy will fall into a depression. The economists have run out of tricks to give the economy a boost. That's why increasingly there are voices calling for helicopter money, which in this case means basically giving everyone some cash in the hope they will spend it and get the economy growing again.

All the endless cutting and digging for profits means average people have less to spend... Basic income would get people spending again, these economists  hope.

Personally I'm not fussed on their motivations, I think its good in principal, and can hopefully be improved on in practice...


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## ska invita (Mar 7, 2016)

Heres an example for the Telegraph just the other day - kind of sums up my post above Get ready to be showered by helicopter money ...includes basic income as an option

There have been positive sounds made about basic income in the FT, the economist, the telegraph, radio 4, basically across the right economic media...but here the conversation is about stopping the system from collapsing rather than helping the people.

i think the degree of money given makes a difference...finland and netherlands are looking at £200 a week or thereabouts...in the uk if it ever happens it will never start at more than the dole is at that moment. £200 feels a bit more like socialism


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## Treacle Toes (Mar 7, 2016)

ska invita said:


> but here the conversation is about stopping the system from collapsing rather than helping the people.



That's it in my opinion. There is no real change if the suggestion boils down to to propping up the current system, little more than the hijacking of progressive thought by the Right in terms of language and faux-sentiment? Short term micro-reforms that lead back to the same sorry shit....it's just _us_ running around trying to fill holes in a sinking ship rather than swimming to shore and building a better one or...if we so wish, working the land.


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## ska invita (Mar 7, 2016)

It's reformism yes but I think its a good reform and one that can be a thin end of a more progressive wedge.

A total collapse of the economic system would be all out war... Plugging the holes isn't such a bad option under the circumstances...

I think basic income is an opportunity, and one that has opened up because of this financial crisis. It doesn't solve all our problems but I still think its a potential step in the right direction.


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## DotCommunist (Mar 8, 2016)

I may be a thick cat when it comes to macroeconomics but are we really looking at a situation where capitalists would give you money to keep the bigger gears greased and allow the mysterious hand to keep stimulating the free market nob? Is that where we are now? I just don't understand anything anymore. Right-capital offering free money, or at least thinking about it. Discussing it. Worlds gone mad


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## Idris2002 (Mar 8, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> I may be a thick cat when it comes to macroeconomics but are we really looking at a situation where capitalists would give you money to keep the bigger gears greased and allow the mysterious hand to keep stimulating the free market nob? Is that where we are now? I just don't understand anything anymore. Right-capital offering free money, or at least thinking about it. Discussing it. Worlds gone mad


One thing you may be sure of, they're not thinking of it because they've suddenly decided not to be total cunts. There's an angle they're looking to play. . . 

And the angle is that the idea of collective social solidarity seems to be missing in the very concept of basic income. The way the neoliberals propose it, it's an individualised, and individualistic solution to the collective problems their ideology has created.


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## ska invita (Mar 8, 2016)

Basic income is what it is... Political philosophy and attitude attached to it is in the eye of the beholder and can change with successive governments.

Once its established as a principle it will be hard to undo


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## ska invita (Mar 8, 2016)

One aspect that seems somewhat untested is what the inflationary impact would be... How much will prices go up to soak up the extra cash out there. From what I read in the UK at least the economists want more inflation, but at present can't seem to get it. Once the money tap turns on it would be hard to regulate and then turn off...


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## ska invita (Mar 8, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> Right-capital offering free money, or at least thinking about it. Discussing it. Worlds gone mad


The world economy is truly fucked... Scarily so. Here if the housing bubble bursts.....

It was the crisis of post WW2 chaos that gave us the nhs and other social reforms ... Seems only right we get something out of this ongoing crisis.

There's also a big difference as to if the money comes from taxation or from the money pixie in the sky. At the moment theres talk of magicking the money out of nowhere... (printing it)


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## Treacle Toes (Mar 8, 2016)

Idris2002 said:


> One thing you may be sure of, they're not thinking of it because they've suddenly decided not to be total cunts. There's an angle they're looking to play. . .
> 
> And the angle is that the idea of collective social solidarity seems to be missing in the very concept of basic income. The way the neoliberals propose it, it's an individualised, and individualistic solution to the collective problems their ideology has created.



Yes...and in this guise and for these reasons it will do nothing more than perpetuate the current 'be a selfish cunt' system.

That's my issue... half baked reforms are not change.


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## brogdale (Mar 8, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> I may be a thick cat when it comes to macroeconomics but are we really looking at a situation where capitalists would give you money to keep the bigger gears greased and allow the mysterious hand to keep stimulating the free market nob? Is that where we are now? I just don't understand anything anymore. Right-capital offering free money, or at least thinking about it. Discussing it. Worlds gone mad


Yes and no.
The capitalists might want the proles to have a bit more cash to flash on the shite they're producing, but they don't want to forgo their profit/accumulated wealth to fund it. They'd be happy for it to come from 'printing' or even redistribution from the richer 'little people' to the poorer 'little people'; either way they & their corporations wouldn't pay because they don't join in with tax stuff.
IMO 'helicopter money' would simply represent the 'fourth wave' of macro-economic stop-gaps designed to plug the diverging gap between productivity and wages, characteristic of the neo-liberal era.







The growing inequality from the accelerating appropriation of surplus value obviously has the potential for crisis as aggregate demand crashes. Successive approaches to attempt to 'make good' that demand deficit have included _inflation (_allowing the 'money illusion' to boost consumption), _public debt, _and most recently explosive _private debt ("_Privatized Keynesianism_"_ ).





(both graphs for USA)
But all these attempts have had a finite time within which they can perpetuate the illusion of some degree of social justice before they've started to have negative impacts upon capitalists ability to accumulate...hence policy change. 'Helicopter money' would simply represent the latest/last (?) attempt to forestall the real social breakdown made inevitable by neo-liberalism.


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## William of Walworth (Mar 9, 2016)

I've really got to make myself get into this thread and read the whole lot because I've always been interested in/keen on basic income and even on helicopter money. So I definitely need to know more. The the morning before work is not the best updating time though 

Still,  for now ...

Good luck with any idea of arguing the economic case against helicopter money, because most ordinary people would, erm, simply like to have some! (Surely?)

brogdale


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## mauvais (Mar 9, 2016)

Not that simple. Most people would like to have more beer in their glass, but not by pouring water into it.


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## LeslieB (Mar 9, 2016)

mauvais said:


> Not that simple. Most people would like to have more beer in their glass, but not by pouring water into it.



That's actually an excellent analogy. A basic income would be great, but not if it purely comes from printing money...


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## mauvais (Mar 9, 2016)

That much is what already commonly happens on a smaller scale with share issuance, e.g. a company raises £Xm by issuing new shares and thus diluting the value of everyone's holding. This is basically printing money. But it's often acceptable, if unpalatable, because the raised money is necessary; in an extreme case, the alternative is running out of cash and rendering the whole thing worthless.

A lot more control and alignment of priorities in this example though than in the wilderness of currency & QE.


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## ska invita (Mar 9, 2016)

Pretty sure the Dutch and Finnish are planning to use tax to generate the money for their basic income programmes...so if you're talking about £200 a week, thats a massive wealth redistribution scheme, probably the biggest theres ever been.

Lets say the UK introduced Basic Income at dole rates (what is it at the moment? £70 I think...), and used printed money to fund that at first...I very much doubt the plan would be to print money forever into the future - before long that money would also have to come from general taxation.
Once the principle is set it would be hard to undo. If other schemes in europe are successful there will be more pressure on the UK to follow their rates and increase the amount paid. Like I said, a potentially thin end of a more progressive wedge.

===
Just did a quick search to check about the Dutch experiment and first link was US business magazine Forbes getting excited about this <another example of the right wing economic press blowing the trumpet
The Excellent Dutch Experiment Into The Universal Basic Income


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## Fez909 (Mar 9, 2016)

I know the likelihood is that the UK, if it ever did bring in basic income, would be set at dole rates, but that wouldn't be enough.

A basic income has to replace all benefits to be useful, otherwise there's no gain. Also, dole is deliberately and openly set at below the rate at which you can live. It should be set at the same level as the living wage, at least, but the minimum wage would probably be the actual amount.

I think we're a long way off getting it in the UK though, and we'll probably be one of the last places to implement it.


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## LeslieB (Mar 9, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> I know the likelihood is that the UK, if it ever did bring in basic income, would be set at dole rates, but that wouldn't be enough.



Well it wouldn't be ideal, but £70 a week, working or not, would be a damn good start. And people would be able to take a few hours work here and there to top that up in a way it isn't practical to do while on the dole (if you think it is, try doing it and declaring it and going through all the fuss)

Plus you wouldn't get poor sods topping themselves after being sanctioned for a making a simple mistake (or even a job centre mistake)




> I think we're a long way off getting it in the UK though, and we'll probably be one of the last places to implement it.



I agree there. Can anyone tell me a progressive reform the UK *has* been the first to introduce? With pretty much everything that could be called 'progressive' another European country, or even a more progressive US state, has got there before us.


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## ska invita (Mar 10, 2016)

Following todays interest rates to zero move;

*George Magnus: Helicopter money could be next*
*By ‘throwing the kitchen sink’ at the eurozone’s problems, the European Central Bankmay have moved closer to the point where it has to actually start showering cash on the economy.*

So argues George Magnus, an experienced City voice who used to be head economist at UBS.

He argues that the market reaction shows investors don’t believe today’s package of interest rate cuts, cheap loans and a beefier asset purchase scheme will work.

So what’s left? Free money, effectively.

Magnus writes:

So is the ECB’s arsenal now bare? If it sticks to the general approach to policy it has currently then yes. But, though this is inconceivable as thing stand, there are things the ECB could theoretically do. It could take us towards Milton Friedman’s “helicopter money.” This would involve the ECB taking a more direct role in creating money that might be distributed directly to households, companies and banks, for example by buying loans from banks, or public debt directly from governments, or financing cash distributions in the form of tax cuts or investment allowances.

These ideas will remain the subject of idle chatter for the time being. But eventually, who knows? If today’s kitchen sink episode ends with a whimper, as seems likely, and governments continue to stand aside from the economic fray, Europeans may demand still more of their central bank.


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## ska invita (Mar 10, 2016)

Just on my commute home and in the Standard there's a comment piece from Amol Ranjan, Independent editor, calling for basic income... Definite growing drum beat...


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## xenon (Mar 10, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> I may be a thick cat when it comes to macroeconomics but are we really looking at a situation where capitalists would give you money to keep the bigger gears greased and allow the mysterious hand to keep stimulating the free market nob? Is that where we are now? I just don't understand anything anymore. Right-capital offering free money, or at least thinking about it. Discussing it. Worlds gone mad



Stabelise the base of the developed world's pyramid.


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## Treacle Toes (Mar 10, 2016)

ska invita said:


> Just on my commute home and in the Standard there's a comment piece from Amol Ranjan, Independent editor, calling for basic income... Definite growing drum beat...



Even the daily-evening-free-fascist is on to it!


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## Fez909 (Mar 10, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> Well it wouldn't be ideal, but £70 a week, working or not, would be a damn good start. And people would be able to take a few hours work here and there to top that up in a way it isn't practical to do while on the dole (if you think it is, try doing it and declaring it and going through all the fuss)
> 
> Plus you wouldn't get poor sods topping themselves after being sanctioned for a making a simple mistake (or even a job centre mistake)
> 
> ...


While there's definitely a growing mass of people calling for a BI, it has to be funded somehow. And the way it is usually proposed to be funded is by getting rid of all other social security. The idea behind basic income is that you don't _need _any other income because it's enough to live on.

£70 isn't enough to live on so they can't get rid of other benefits. If they can't get rid of other benefits, where is the money for £70/w for every adult coming from?

There 20m working age people in the UK, so that's £74,3bn a year they need to give them all £70 a week. The entire social security budget is only £110bn a year currently. There are 8.88m "economically inactive" adults in the UK currently, so if we take that away from the 20m population size for the calculation above (they're already getting seventy quid a week so shouldn't need counting here), that's 11.12m people, or an extra £40.5bn on the state spending bill - nearly as much as we spend on defence.


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## ska invita (Mar 10, 2016)

Rutita1 said:


> Even the daily-evening-free-fascist is on to it!


yep - though its a comment piece rather than an editorial - here's the piece
Guaranteed income is the kind of radical idea we urgently need
One of the main themes this column has developed over the past few years is the impact of globalisation and technological innovation on the rich world’s poor, and how the resulting anxiety and anger explain the rise of politicians such as Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. For supporters of these creatures change means loss, especially when it is rapid and hard to prepare for.

In the Nineties, the share of national income that went to the labour force in rich countries was 66 per cent. That fell to 62 per cent in the 2000s, and is falling still. This trend has vast social and moral implications. Stemming it may require radical policies. I am in favour of radical policies, especially when they address the biggest challenges we face, and achieve support across the political divide. That is why I’m interested in the universal basic income.

This is a guaranteed government payment to all citizens, regardless of their private wealth, which replaces conventional welfare. Sound bonkers? It isn’t. After all, it’s not a million miles from the tax-free allowance of £10,600 that the Coalition passed, which now has support from all the main parties.

For those on the Left a basic income appeals because it provides a safety net and attacks inequality directly. Thomas Paine argued for a version of it in his 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada’s version of Nick Clegg, is supporting its introduction in Ontario this week. Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece and an influential Marxist, is an avid supporter.

But the most persuasive arguments emanate from the American Right. Several of the smartest, reform-minded conservatives in the US have endorsed the idea, including David Frum and Charles Murray. And get this: Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were advocates too. (Any idea that unites those two with Varoufakis has got to be interesting). These influential conservatives were attracted both by the idea of radical simplification of the tax code and lower expenditure on bureaucracy. At a time of austerity and indebted governments, lifting millions out of poverty while increasing efficiency and reducing day-to-day dependency is attractive.

Of course there are snags. It could disincentivise some workers and it’s not clear when immigrants should qualify. Above all, if all citizens received it the initial cost could be vast, and the poor would end up paying the rich.

That is why it makes sense to test the theory in the real world and to start small — which is what they’re doing not just in Ontario but in parts of Finland and the Dutch city of Utrecht. In Switzerland, there’s a vote on the basic income in June. As Hannah Fearn wrote in The Independent this week, if these countries are taking it seriously, “Britain cannot keep dismissing it without its own test of the evidence”.

I am not yet an advocate because I need to test the idea against strong opposition before I espouse it, and see the evidence. But politics across the Western world is waking up to the need for radical thinking to address our fast-changing labour market. After all, George Osborne increased the minimum wage less than two decades after his party opposed its introduction. Might a Chancellor with big ambitions, and in search of popular appeal, guarantee a basic income for you and me?

_Amol Rajan is editor of  The Independent. @amolrajan

Im pretty sure Amol came up on Urban after a piece he wrote saying I love reggae but theres no good reggae nights as theyve all been hijacked by those religious nut Rastas  anyone remember that?_

Also this yesterday in the paper he
edits
_After Canada, Britain can't ignore the need for a basic income anymore_


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## LeslieB (Mar 10, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> While there's definitely a growing mass of people calling for a BI, it has to be funded somehow. And the way it is usually proposed to be funded is by getting rid of all other social security. .



And by abolishing the tax free allowance so you pay tax on everything you earn.

Is £70 enough to live on? Well assuming you get housing benefit on top, it's just about enough to exist on. I have done it for 6 months and yes it is possible. 

But that assumes you never work at all. I think there should be premiums for those who can't work due to illness, disablility or caring for someone who has one of those things. Most BI models propose this. 

 Everyone else should be able to find some work to top up their BI, even if it is only a few hours a week. Even 5 hours a week at £7 an hour takes you over the £100 mark and that improves the livability considerably.


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## brogdale (Mar 10, 2016)

ska invita said:


> yep - though its a comment piece rather than an editorial - here's the piece
> Guaranteed income is the kind of radical idea we urgently need
> One of the main themes this column has developed over the past few years is the impact of globalisation and technological innovation on the rich world’s poor, and how the resulting anxiety and anger explain the rise of politicians such as Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. For supporters of these creatures change means loss, especially when it is rapid and hard to prepare for.
> 
> ...


I think my main concerns about consolidator states toying with the concept are summed up quite succinctly in this quote from that piece on the Ontario proposals in yesterday's Indy...


> The pilot would also test whether a basic income would provide a more efficient way of delivering income support, strengthen the attachment to the labour force, and achieve savings in other areas such as health care and housing supports. The government will work with communities, researchers and other stakeholders in 2016 to determine how best to implement a Basic Income pilot.”


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## Fez909 (Mar 10, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> And by abolishing the tax free allowance so you pay tax on everything you earn.
> 
> Is £70 enough to live on? Well assuming you get housing benefit on top, it's just about enough to exist on. I have done it for 6 months and yes it is possible.
> 
> ...


"assuming you get housing benefit on top" is a big assumption, but let's go with it.

Council tax? Water rates? Electricity? Gas? Phone bills? Internet? Food? They're all essential to modern life and I'm not sure how you could afford those with only £70 a week. What about clothing? Cleaning products? 

Westminster has the lowest council tax bills in the UK @ £674/y - that's £13/w
The cheapest average energy bill for a small house/flat is £44/m - £10/w
Mobile phone - £5/m - £1/w (you might argue this is no longer essential if you didn't have to work, whereas it's absolutely essential now - fair enough, but it's a quid a week so I'm including it)
Internet - £17.50 line rental + free internet - £4/w
Water average bill - £388/y - £7.50/w

So those are the bare essentials, minus food, and you're on £35.50/w. Average food spend is £58.80, but you could spend much less. Let's say £20. I don't think you can spend much less than that and not be eating shit. So that leaves you with £15/w for _everything else._ If a lightbulb breaks, you might have to get the bus to town £4 for a day rider in Leeds, £1 for the bulb. That's 1/3 of your spending money gone. What if you need to buy a shirt for an interview? Can't. You don't have the money.

£70 a week is a disgraceful amount to have to live on, and I've had recent first hand experience. I was on the dole for over a year and only survived because I had family who supported me and a huge overdraft.


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## ska invita (Mar 10, 2016)

brogdale said:


> I think my main concerns about consolidator states toying with the concept are summed up quite succinctly in this quote from that piece on the Ontario proposals in yesterday's Indy...
> 
> "The pilot would also test whether a basic income would provide a more efficient way of delivering income support, strengthen the attachment to the labour force, and achieve savings in other areas such as health care and housing supports. The government will work with communities, researchers and other stakeholders in 2016 to determine how best to implement a Basic Income pilot."



the fact that its more efficient is objectively true - one payment given to everyone knocks loads of forms, mean testing and bureaucracy on the head...and like Leslie B said thats also good on the level that theres no more hoop jumping above an alligator pit for "benefit" (hate that word) claimants. So yes, there should be savings to be made in that regard (once the money itself is raised), and I presume thats what they're angling at in the article.. I dont know what "strengthen the attachment to the labour force" is meant to mean?

But is that what you were referring to brogdale? I dont think it is...


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## LeslieB (Mar 10, 2016)

I'm not sure we are disagreeing about very much here, Fez. I did get council tax benefit as well, I'm not sure how that would work under BI.

But yeah, it's really tough. I didn't buy any clothes for that 6 month period and I cycled *everywhere* to save on bus fares. And yes I ate shit food.

I couldn't have done it indefinitely that is for sure. But it is possible, short term at least.

I don't think the idea is that everyone should give up work and live on BI indefinitely. That's certainly not how I understand it.


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## brogdale (Mar 10, 2016)

ska invita said:


> the fact that its more efficient is objectively true - one payment given to everyone knocks loads of forms, mean testing and bureaucracy on the head...and like Leslie B said thats also good on the level that theres no more hoop jumping above an alligator pit for "benefit" (hate that word) claimants. So yes, there should be savings to be made in that regard (once the money itself is raised), and I presume thats what they're angling at.. I dont know what "strengthen the attachment to the labour force" is meant to mean?
> 
> But is that what you were referring to brogdale? I dont think it is...


"Strengthen attachment to the labour market" is neoliberalese for forcing people to work through cutting overall benefit packages to the rock bottom basic income. They'd be eyeing up savings beyond that achievable through efficiencies.


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## ska invita (Mar 10, 2016)

Im sure there are potential devils in the detail, and it could certainly be implemented in a variety of ways...ultimately though could a model be introduced that gave people in the UK less than they get now? It seems impossible considering how little a sum it is already and the basic costs of living expected to come from it... Hard to talk about in abstract without concrete plans and figures.


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## Fez909 (Mar 17, 2016)

New Zealand gets on board

New Zealanders want to give each of its citizens a basic income


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## Idris2002 (Mar 17, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> New Zealand gets on board
> 
> New Zealanders want to give each of its citizens a basic income



From the comments on that piece:

So people with major disabilities suddenly a fraction of what they previously got and they are left to figure out where to get the rest? Recipe for mass poverty, mass misery. 

That's the devil in the detail of this one. The Kiwis may go ahead with this, but it will only be the end of a long history of thirty years, in which both Labour and National parties have pursued extreme neoliberal policies that caused mass misery among the NZ working class (look at the movie In a Land of Plenty - the whole thing is on youtube, and it will make your blood boil).


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## ska invita (Mar 17, 2016)

Idris2002 said:


> From the comments on that piece:
> 
> So people with major disabilities suddenly a fraction of what they previously got and they are left to figure out where to get the rest? Recipe for mass poverty, mass misery.
> 
> That's the devil in the detail of this one. The Kiwis may go ahead with this, but it will only be the end of a long history of thirty years, in which both Labour and National parties have pursued extreme neoliberal policies that caused mass misery among the NZ working class (look at the movie In a Land of Plenty - the whole thing is on youtube, and it will make your blood boil).


This is definitely something that would need checking in any basic income programme.... There are a number of cases where people are entitled to a range of money pots and any attempt to bin them all in place of one basic income is clearly out of order.... I'm sure there will still be supplements on top of basic income that people will have entitlement to.... 

As with any model, if a government wants to be cunts they can be so, basic income is neutral in that respect, the way it is implemented can be good or bad.

If nz has a bad record on this then that's worrying.


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## Idris2002 (Mar 17, 2016)

ska invita said:


> This is definitely something that would need checking in any basic income programme.... There are a number of cases where people are entitled to a range of money pots and any attempt to bin them all in place of one basic income is clearly out of order.... I'm sure there will still be supplements on top of basic income that people will have entitlement to....
> 
> As with any model, if a government wants to be cunts they can be so, basic income is neutral in that respect, the way it is implemented can be good or bad.
> 
> If nz has a bad record on this then that's worrying.


By christ has it got a bad record, and yes you should be worried. Don't forget though that this is a proposal from the essentially moribund NZ Labour Party, which has been effectively in decline since David Lange's time (Helen Clark was alright for what she was, but that's it).


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## smokedout (Apr 14, 2016)

Some criticisms here - although a bit thin, but then the idea of giving a basic income to everyone, and then taking it back off them also seems a bit thin, as if we can't even suggest that poor people should be given more money, unconditionally, without an elaborate and hugely expensive burearocracy which only really seems to be intended to pacify the daily mail types - and it won't pacify them.

I wrestle with this, its clearly gaining ground as an idea, and in the context of current social security policies would make a lot of peoples lives a lot better.  It could be transformative, in the way the welfare state was, but it could also be the saviour of capitalism, and by the time capital has finished with it they will have most of what they want, full marketisation of public services, flat rate tax, end of the minimum wage and workplace protections.  Then they will probably take it away, as they are doing with the welfare state.

Having said that the welfare state was born out of fears of an organised working class seeking genuinely revolutionary change, there is no such organisation now and its hard to see where it will come from.  Is this the best we can get?  Should we compromise?  I really don't fucking know.


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## William of Walworth (Apr 15, 2016)

I don't think John Harris's article in today's Guardian, about 'UBI' (Universal Basic Income) is up to much, but he at least introduced the basic issues.


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## Kilgore Trout (Apr 15, 2016)

Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.

So, shouldn't this be Basic Benefit not income.


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## Fez909 (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.
> 
> So, shouldn't this be Basic Benefit not income.


Income: money coming in.


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## butchersapron (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.
> 
> So, shouldn't this be Basic Benefit not income.


No it's not.


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## Kilgore Trout (Apr 15, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> Income: money coming in.



Google thinks income is "money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments".

What's the problem with calling it benefit in any case? I assume this is money paid out by the government we are talking about, so its a benefit.


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## Fez909 (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Google thinks income is "money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments".
> 
> What's the problem with calling it benefit in any case? I assume this is money paid out by the government we are talking about, so its a benefit.


Because the word benefit has negative connotations after years of demonisation by tories and media.


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## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

incoming!!


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## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> Because the word benefit has negative connotations after years of demonisation by tories and media.


the idea that scraping by on 70£ can be described in the positive of "benefit" also carries a fair amount of irony to it


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## butchersapron (Apr 15, 2016)

Even the right wing extreme free marketeers who I still maintain most current thinking on this descends from (rather than say the Italian social movements in the 70s) called it 'income' with no qualms. Silly diversion.


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## Lord Camomile (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> What's the problem with calling it benefit in any case? I assume this is money paid out by the government we are talking about, so its a benefit.





Fez909 said:


> Because the word benefit has negative connotations after years of demonisation by tories and media.


Personally I also think it's just inaccurate and, possibly, disingenuous. There aren't "benefits" to needing help from the state to survive, and by calling it that it helps perpetuate the popular misconception that people are claiming through choice.

Something more like "assistance" would perhaps be more appropriate.


----------



## butchersapron (Apr 15, 2016)

Lord Camomile said:


> Personally I also think it's just inaccurate and, possibly, disingenuous. There aren't "benefits" to needing help from the state to survive, and by calling it that it helps perpetuate the popular misconception that people are claiming through choice.
> 
> Something more like "assistance" would perhaps be more appropriate.


You can't call a right assistance!


----------



## Lord Camomile (Apr 15, 2016)

butchersapron said:


> You can't call a right assistance!


Hm, fair point, but is it not "assistance" to getting your rights? Anyway, was just a first suggestion, and I did try to qualify it as much as possible. Perhaps "income" is better. Probably shouldn't have posted really it's just the term "benefits" irritates me greatly.


----------



## bi0boy (Apr 15, 2016)

Lord Camomile said:


> Hm, fair point, but is it not "assistance" to getting your rights? Anyway, was just a first suggestion, and I did try to qualify it as much as possible. Perhaps "income" is better. Probably shouldn't have posted really it's just the term "benefits" irritates me greatly.



How about "Universal Credit"?


----------



## Lord Camomile (Apr 15, 2016)

I have waded into a conversation I am not equipped to deal with


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## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

Lord Camomile said:


> Personally I also think it's just inaccurate and, possibly, disingenuous. There aren't "benefits" to needing help from the state to survive, and by calling it that it helps perpetuate the popular misconception that people are claiming through choice.
> 
> Something more like "assistance" would perhaps be more appropriate.


"aid" (and therefore assistance) also carries negative connotations, makes you feel needy. Other options include: "my dues" , "tax rebate", "crumbs from the table", "pay-off", "blood money",  "basically shut the fuck up income"


----------



## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

Universal Crumbs has a ring to it I think


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## ViolentPanda (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Income is money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.
> 
> So, shouldn't this be Basic Benefit not income.



For purposes of categorisation by the state, income is merely "moneys received", with no conditions attached as to source or frequency of receipt.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Google thinks income is "money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments".



What Google has to say is immaterial.  What matters is how the state would definite it.



> What's the problem with calling it benefit in any case? I assume this is money paid out by the government we are talking about, so its a benefit.



Is a tax rebate a benefit? Is an educational maintenance grant a benefit.

Try harder, please.


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## bi0boy (Apr 15, 2016)

ViolentPanda said:


> For purposes of categorisation by the state, income is merely "moneys received", with no conditions attached as to source or frequency of receipt.



Apart from capital:

BIM15025 - Trade profits: capital or revenue?


----------



## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

ViolentPanda said:


> What Google has to say is immaterial.


Tax dodging google are the last people to go to for truthful financial terminology - right kids!


----------



## Kilgore Trout (Apr 15, 2016)

ViolentPanda said:


> What Google has to say is immaterial.  What matters is how the state would definite it.
> 
> Is a tax rebate a benefit? Is an educational maintenance grant a benefit.
> 
> Try harder, please.



Moneys paid out by the state are mostly termed benefits: housing benefit, child benefit etc. Money paid to everyone could be called universal benefit.

A tax rebate is a return of money that has been overpaid so not a state benefit.

I don't mind the term Basic Grant if that's agreeable. Just not income as all the definitions relate to that being earned or from investments.

I'm not against the idea of a basic grant/benefit/assistance whatever. I'd love to chill at home. Just don't think its income as per the definition.


----------



## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> . Just don't think its income as per the definition.



Which matters because?


----------



## Fez909 (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Moneys paid out by the state are mostly termed benefits: housing benefit, child benefit etc. Money paid to everyone could be called universal benefit.
> 
> A tax rebate is a return of money that has been overpaid so not a state benefit.
> 
> ...


Basic income is earned. It's a return on investment of human capital into our society.. Google's definition fits.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 15, 2016)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> Which matters because?


He wants to be able to carry on labellling people with the stigma of being "on benefits".

You wouldn't get Theodore Sturgeon at this sort of carry-on.


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## butchersapron (Apr 15, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> Basic income is earned. It's a return on investment of human capital into our society.. Google's definition fits.


It's actually all the stuff that they keep/take from us that should be called benefits.


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## Greebo (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> <snip> I'm not against the idea of a basic grant/benefit/assistance whatever. I'd love to chill at home. Just don't think its income as per the definition.


So would I, sweetie, but it's not what I can afford to do while in receipt of benefits.

BTW they are called benefits, because in the beginning they were drawn from the money paid into National Insurance.  The payout you receive when making a claim on insurance, used to be (and still is?) referred to as "a benefit".


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## ska invita (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> A tax rebate is a return of money that has been overpaid .


Exactly! And this has the potential to be a bit of long overdue payback


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## Fez909 (Apr 15, 2016)

butchersapron said:


> It's actually all the stuff that they keep/take from us that should be called benefits.


That's the problem with being a capitalist. Eventually you run out of other people's money to steal.


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## Kilgore Trout (Apr 15, 2016)

Fez909 said:


> That's the problem with being a capitalist. Eventually you run out of other people's money to steal.



Isn't that socialism?


----------



## Pickman's model (Apr 15, 2016)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Isn't that socialism?


no. 

next


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## bi0boy (Apr 15, 2016)

ska invita said:


> Exactly! And this has the potential to be a bit of long overdue payback



A poll tax rebate?


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## Treacle Toes (Apr 18, 2016)

Just saw this pop up though I have not had a chance to read it yet.

Six Reasons Why Universal Basic Income is a Bad Idea #dabf


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## dylanredefined (Apr 18, 2016)

Rutita1 said:


> Just saw this pop up though I have not had a chance to read it yet.
> 
> Six Reasons Why Universal Basic Income is a Bad Idea #dabf



 Makes some good points pocket money for the well off and manacles for the poor.


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## Rimbaud (Apr 19, 2016)

I had a long chat with a friend about this the other night, haven't exactly done any rigorous scholarship but we came to the conclusion that basic income could potentially set off a chain of events leading to the abolition of capitalism.

1 - Would lead to an explosion of leisure time, due to job shares etc, opening up the possibility of new forms of grassroots level solidarities and organisation, that previously people didn't have time for.
2 - Would precipitate a kind of automation revolution. The tech exists to automate a lot of menial service jobs, but it isn't implemented because of fears of PR disasters which would be ameliorated by basic income, leading to a cumulative increase in unemployment.
3 - The final scenario of masses of materially comfortable unemployed with lots of time on their hands, with historically unprecedented education levels and capacity for mobilisation, existing alongside a tiny, super-rich capitalist class who employ very few people but own all the productive apparatus, would inevitably lead to demands for democratic public ownership of the means of production.

Might be just daydreaming, but at the very least, the dependency on waged labour for survival has got to go at some point, and basic income seems a practical way to do it in the short term, and I think it would be a huge game changer.


----------



## Rimbaud (Apr 19, 2016)

dp


----------



## smokedout (Apr 21, 2016)

Rimbaud said:


> I had a long chat with a friend about this the other night, haven't exactly done any rigorous scholarship but we came to the conclusion that basic income could potentially set off a chain of events leading to the abolition of capitalism.
> 
> 1 - Would lead to an explosion of leisure time, due to job shares etc, opening up the possibility of new forms of grassroots level solidarities and organisation, that previously people didn't have time for.



The UK had a form of wage replacement if not basic income prior to 1997 when increased social security conditionality began.  It was relatively easy to live cheaply on the dole if you were young and healthy and you'd be mostly left alone to get on with things.  What emerged was a small but radical sub-culture that was able to organize effectively, but was completely alienated from the wider working class and dominated by well meaning upper/middle class people who had more resources and were able to establish social dominance through this.  The movement as it was failed, and was easily swept away by capital and the state when it became too troublesome.



> 2 - Would precipitate a kind of automation revolution. The tech exists to automate a lot of menial service jobs, but it isn't implemented because of fears of PR disasters which would be ameliorated by basic income, leading to a cumulative increase in unemployment.



This isn't true.  Where the tech exists and is cheaper than human capital it is being introduced, such as self-scan tills.  Even just the threat of the tech is being weaponised against working class organisation - such as self driving tubes.  A basic income would be likely to make human capital cheaper, leading to a slow down in automation, or it may just force capital to continue its search elsewhere for cheap labour - it will be a long time, if ever, before a robot is cheaper than a child worker in a very poor country.  People are already the ultimate robots to serve other people, and they are cheap.  Not much more than 100 years ago it was normal to own a couple in the basement if you were middle class. 

Automation will continue to place some pressure on job availability I think, that is likely to result in a downgrading of many jobs to precarious status, that's what's happened so far, plus wide scale structural unemployment - we've got that already as well.  It's only if a Basic Income has an impact on the workforce on the demand side - in that people refuse to do shit jobs - that it may impact on capital.  There are so many ways capital might respond to that though - from flight, to increased costs of essential services or housing, to simply the removal of the basic income.  Under current conditions affordability is a factor for a basic income, the rich will have to pay, without a significant or revoltionary re-organisation of class relations that won't last for long.



> 3 - The final scenario of masses of materially comfortable unemployed with lots of time on their hands, with historically unprecedented education levels and capacity for mobilisation, existing alongside a tiny, super-rich capitalist class who employ very few people but own all the productive apparatus, would inevitably lead to demands for democratic public ownership of the means of production.



This assumes that automation will eliminate work in a timeframe that is worth bothering with, which is unlikely.  That a basic income will result in masses of materially comfortable people is also unlikely - what is materially comfortable?  The average household income is over £30 grand a year and lots of those people would say they are not materially comfortable.  Look at the price of housing.  The point at which material comfort is reached and the Basic Income begins to be reduced/removed would have to be set very high to maintain even current standards for the majority of people.  At this point the tax take looks wobbly.  Are the glocal super rich going to pay for all of this?  And own all the tech?  At which point their dominance is complete, they own us, Robocop and everything in the world.  That doesn't look like a revolutionary scenario to me.


----------



## DotCommunist (Apr 21, 2016)

smokedout said:


> . Even just the threat of the tech is being weaponised against working class organisation - such as self driving tubes


I remember earlier in the year there was an american state where a push for a higher min wage was going on- big billboard posters were run by interests opposed showing ipad type interfaces and warning fast food workers that 'this can do your job' if you vote the wrong way.


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## camouflage (Apr 21, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> I remember earlier in the year there was an american state where a push for a higher min wage was going on-



The forward-thinking maniacs of Vermont probably.


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## Rimbaud (Apr 22, 2016)

smokedout said:


> The UK had a form of wage replacement if not basic income prior to 1997 when increased social security conditionality began.  It was relatively easy to live cheaply on the dole if you were young and healthy and you'd be mostly left alone to get on with things.  What emerged was a small but radical sub-culture that was able to organize effectively, but was completely alienated from the wider working class and dominated by well meaning upper/middle class people who had more resources and were able to establish social dominance through this.  The movement as it was failed, and was easily swept away by capital and the state when it became too troublesome.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'm not particularly invested in this idea, what I posted above was the product of a few hours chatting only semi-seriously over some beers. Nevertheless, I'm going to defend it for the sake of developing my thoughts on basic income.

The situation before 1997 isn't the same as basic income though, because as you said the "small, radical subculture" was completely alienated from the wider working class. Giving everyone basic income is different because there would be no stigma. Longish periods of unemployment punctuating periods of casual, short term employment would be standard for a lot of people.

And what does it mean to be alienated from the wider working class these days? The moment when revolution through workplace organisation was possible probably died with the 1970s. The conditions that gave rise to that form of labour organisation - long term employment alongside masses of co-workers - simply don't exist anymore. Employment is too precarious, people switch jobs too often, workplaces have smaller workforces who tend to be geographically atomised. Not the same as a factory town where everyone meets down the Working Men's Club. Everyone is alienated from everyone, there is no clearly identifiable labour movement to be alienated from anymore. A balance of time and resources - e.g. you could work for 6 months, save a bit, then live off basic income for the rest of the year cutting only a little into your savings - might actually reverse this atomisation as people could use their time to create genuine social, community spaces. Something which does, in fact, require more resources than the dole allows you and more time and energy than working allows you.

By "materially comfortable unemployed" I mean people who are unemployed but a) actually have time to do things without being hounded by the dole office and b) aren't cowed into inactivity by self-blame and shame. I'm thinking less about the direct economic effects and more about how basic income will change things politically and socially. You talk about the cost of housing, but organising a rent strike for example would be a heck of a lot of easier when you have a wide pool of activists who aren't knackered after work in the evening.

I know I'm speculating here and I could be completely wrong, but with regards to automation, basic income could create a shift in paradigm where there is pressure from below to invest more in automation (because people wouldn't fear unemployment, so they would be more motivated to find ways to make their jobs easier) offset by a demand for companies to contribute a greater share of profits in tax. Basically what I'm imagining is basic income having a transformative effect politically. Once it becomes normalised, the fact that everyone benefits from it and to greater or lesser degrees depend on it would change the nature of political discourse and political demands. A precedent would be set for the socialisation of production which would be a lot more difficult to frame in terms of scivers and strivers.

The most compelling argument against capitalism to me is that we have growing structural unemployment existing alongside people working ever longer hours, due to the dependency on waged labour for survival. A reduction of time spent working as well as a reduction in unemployment can only be achieved through economic planning, not through market forces, but realistically we aren't going to be able to establish a planned economic system in one go. Planned economies have only ever been established in countries where there has been very little existing infrastructure to begin with, and in a developed nation it is considerably more complicated to set in motion. Basic income, however, is a baby step towards greater socialisation of wealth and more rational planning, and changes the nature of the game significantly. It won't lead to an abolition of capitalism immediately, and in the short term it may well create greater inequalities, but it opens up new possibilities for resistance. Predicting the future is a fool's game, so I could be completely wrong, but equally you could be too. It is at the very least worth considering.


----------



## Rimbaud (Apr 22, 2016)

dp again - I keep trying to edit my posts and accidentally quoting them instead!


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## NoXion (Apr 22, 2016)

Rutita1 said:


> Just saw this pop up though I have not had a chance to read it yet.
> 
> Six Reasons Why Universal Basic Income is a Bad Idea #dabf



That article claims that universality is a right wing idea, and uses the example of flat taxes to make the case for its claim. I don't think that argument is comprehensive enough to settle the issue. Universality can be applied as in the flat tax, a one-size-fits-all solution that creates more problems than it solves. But it can also be more flexible in its application, as with the NHS (or at least as the NHS used to be). Even these days a considerable majority of people use the NHS rather than private healthcare providers if this chart is any indication. So on that basis I wouldn't be so quick to condemn universality as an entirely right wing idea.


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## Crispy (Apr 22, 2016)

There's a threshold that has to be crossed for universality to be just. A low flat tax can be paid by anyone. A high basic income is enough for anyone to live on, even those with higher living costs.


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## butchersapron (Apr 22, 2016)

NoXion said:


> That article claims that universality is a right wing idea, and uses the example of flat taxes to make the case for its claim. I don't think that argument is comprehensive enough to settle the issue. Universality can be applied as in the flat tax, a one-size-fits-all solution that creates more problems than it solves. But it can also be more flexible in its application, as with the NHS (or at least as the NHS used to be). Even these days a considerable majority of people use the NHS rather than private healthcare providers if this chart is any indication. So on that basis I wouldn't be so quick to condemn universality as an entirely right wing idea.


I know where he's coining from - under capitalism universality may well be our best defence (or ground for extension) of aspects of the social wage though. The way he puts it verges on a demand for needs testing under current conditions.


----------



## J Ed (Apr 22, 2016)

DotCommunist said:


> I remember earlier in the year there was an american state where a push for a higher min wage was going on- big billboard posters were run by interests opposed showing ipad type interfaces and warning fast food workers that 'this can do your job' if you vote the wrong way.


----------



## Crispy (Apr 22, 2016)

Sounds great! Vote Cuomo!


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## butchersapron (Apr 22, 2016)

If only he didn't sack all those state workers who would have got the rise.


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## ItDidNaeWork (Apr 22, 2016)

J Ed said:


>



Wow! That sort of weird propaganda surely must have backfired, right? It's just so out of touch it's bizarre.

Btw, at first glance I could have sworn the text at the bottom left said "Paid for by the exploitative policies institute"


----------



## smokedout (Apr 22, 2016)

Rimbaud said:


> I'm not particularly invested in this idea, what I posted above was the product of a few hours chatting only semi-seriously over some beers. Nevertheless, I'm going to defend it for the sake of developing my thoughts on basic income.
> 
> The situation before 1997 isn't the same as basic income though, because as you said the "small, radical subculture" was completely alienated from the wider working class. Giving everyone basic income is different because there would be no stigma. Longish periods of unemployment punctuating periods of casual, short term employment would be standard for a lot of people.



Why would that be standard?  This is an assumption that doesn't stand up to any recent comparisons, from trials into basic income style schemes which show little impact on work participation to the UK's own experience with the introduction of the welfare state.  Unless a basic income were set very high, and living costs didn't rise to accommodate that (which they would) then I expect there would be very little difference.



> And what does it mean to be alienated from the wider working class these days? The moment when revolution through workplace organisation was possible probably died with the 1970s. The conditions that gave rise to that form of labour organisation - long term employment alongside masses of co-workers - simply don't exist anymore. Employment is too precarious, people switch jobs too often, workplaces have smaller workforces who tend to be geographically atomised. Not the same as a factory town where everyone meets down the Working Men's Club. Everyone is alienated from everyone, there is no clearly identifiable labour movement to be alienated from anymore. A balance of time and resources - e.g. you could work for 6 months, save a bit, then live off basic income for the rest of the year cutting only a little into your savings - might actually reverse this atomisation as people could use their time to create genuine social, community spaces. Something which does, in fact, require more resources than the dole allows you and more time and energy than working allows you.
> 
> By "materially comfortable unemployed" I mean people who are unemployed but a) actually have time to do things without being hounded by the dole office and b) aren't cowed into inactivity by self-blame and shame. I'm thinking less about the direct economic effects and more about how basic income will change things politically and socially. You talk about the cost of housing, but organising a rent strike for example would be a heck of a lot of easier when you have a wide pool of activists who aren't knackered after work in the evening.



See here you're just arguing for more/better dole.  I agree but I don't think it would have the transformative impact you're looking for.  I think it would be a lot like it was last time.  Perhaps even there would be space for the sub-culture to crystallise into something more threatening, although it seems ironic and telling that as DIY/rave/anti-globalisation/90s politics started to mature then the conditions for it to exist were removed.



> I know I'm speculating here and I could be completely wrong, but with regards to automation, basic income could create a shift in paradigm where there is pressure from below to invest more in automation (because people wouldn't fear unemployment, so they would be more motivated to find ways to make their jobs easier) offset by a demand for companies to contribute a greater share of profits in tax. Basically what I'm imagining is basic income having a transformative effect politically. Once it becomes normalised, the fact that everyone benefits from it and to greater or lesser degrees depend on it would change the nature of political discourse and political demands. A precedent would be set for the socialisation of production which would be a lot more difficult to frame in terms of scivers and strivers.



I don't see how people not fearing unemployment (and people still would) would create pressure to invest in automation.  This assumes a basic income would drive wages up, because that's the pressure that matters.  I think it would drive wages down.  People on benefits right now gain very little financial advantage from moving into low paid work - hence the need for all the other coercion.  If people were able to keep most of what they earned without losing a basic income they would be prepared, or able, to work for less, less even than the current minimum wage.  And cheap human capital means less pressure to automate.



> The most compelling argument against capitalism to me is that we have growing structural unemployment existing alongside people working ever longer hours, due to the dependency on waged labour for survival.



I'm not sure that's the most compelling argument against capitalism, but I support the development of an anti-work politics, I think it's really fertile and unexplored ground.  As the lived experience of work becomes ever more shit for ever more people I think there is a possible seed of revolutionary discontent somewhere in anti-work ideas although I'm not quite sure where it is.  I also think pragmatically that there needs to be a counterpoint developed to all the hard working families shite in the here and now, I think celebrating worklessness as a provocation is worth exploring, but that's going to be difficult.  And I thnk thats why a basic income bugs me, this assumption that we don't need to win the argument, let alone have a revolution, that we can force capital to gift us something that will create the material conditions for capital's destruction.  That didn't happen with the welfare state and it won't happen with a basic income.

Having said all that, the basic income as an anti-poverty measure, in the here and now has some value.  But why buy into this crap about universality, which is a myth anyway because you'd take it back off people in tax - and people aren't stupid, they'd realise that.  So how about an unconditional minimum income, a threshold below which no-one should fall and which provides a basic quality of life because it is inhumane to have kids who ar hungry or people living in the street.  In other words how about a proper social security system, that
would have a transformative impact on the lives of the poorest, is easily affordable, and provides the opt out you want for people to explore alternatives to work.  It wouldn't be revolutionary, but its something to build on and would create a space where work, and whether we want to do it anymore, can start to be examined.


----------



## Rimbaud (Jun 5, 2016)

smokedout said:


> Why would that be standard?  This is an assumption that doesn't stand up to any recent comparisons, from trials into basic income style schemes which show little impact on work participation to the UK's own experience with the introduction of the welfare state.  Unless a basic income were set very high, and living costs didn't rise to accommodate that (which they would) then I expect there would be very little difference.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Sorry for the very late reply, the point-by-point response format was getting too convoluted. Anyway, Switzerland is voting on universal basic income today, (it looks like they will vote no) which reminded me of the topic.

It seems the root of your opposition to it is that it would drive wages down as people would be prepared to work for less than minimum wage. This may be true, but if a reasonable standard of living is guaranteed regardless, it isn't a disaster in the short term, and there's still room to agitate for change in this area. No doubt the long term implications of it would open up a whole new field of political struggle, one which I think, for reasons already stated, we stand a better chance of winning than we do right now. You say it has little impact on workplace participation based on previous experiments, but there's a difference between small scale tests of a few thousand people and having universal income across an entire society. I think you would definitely see people engaging a lot more in self-actualisation type activities that don't necessarily pay, like volunteer work, but also in the event of a significant political struggle people taking time out to engage in it full time.

The key point is how we deal with the change towards ever increasing automation. In terms of work participation, we never really recovered from de-industrialisation, and now the service sector is slowly but surely heading in the same direction. As you are no doubt aware, any recovery in employment since 2008 is based on part-time, insecure work. I think we've reached a point where we need to accept that this is inevitable and restructure things accordingly. I'm sure you would agree that automation of most menial work is a positive thing - but without universal basic income how would this be possible without creating a kind of humanitarian and economic disaster? You say cheap human labour would create less pressure to automate - again, it is debatable whether human labour would definitely be cheaper, but without a guaranteed basic income automation is overall a pretty bad thing, so saying it would slow down the pace of automation seems like a rather odd argument against it. Even if the pace of automation is slowed down temporarily, (which wouldn't necessarily be the case - there could be political rather than economic pressure to automate certain jobs. A pro-automation labour  movement is currently impossible/suicidal without a basic income in place) creating the structural conditions for humanity to genuinely benefit from automation seems like something we have to deal with at some point.

I'm not sure what you mean about an unconditional minimum income as opposed to universal basic income - do you mean legislate that nobody can earn less than a certain amount, whether in terms of dole or wages? How would this be substantially different from universal basic income? Surely that system would also allow employers to pay below minimum wage and have the difference paid by the government? And if minimum wage is literally the same as dole, why bother working at all?


----------



## Fez909 (Jun 8, 2016)

Switzerland's voters reject basic income plan - BBC News


----------



## rutabowa (Jun 10, 2016)

Labour considering making a basic income trial a manifesto pledge... big news?
Labour manifesto could include universal basic income pilot, John McDonnell says


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## ska invita (Jun 11, 2016)

rutabowa said:


> Labour considering making a basic income trial a manifesto pledge... big news?
> Labour manifesto could include universal basic income pilot, John McDonnell says


Itd be at dole levels though IIRC


----------



## smokedout (Jun 12, 2016)

rutabowa said:


> Labour considering making a basic income trial a manifesto pledge... big news?
> Labour manifesto could include universal basic income pilot, John McDonnell says



See this pisses me off about all this stuff.  The Compass report this is based on shrugs off housing benefit, not including it in their calculations and saying its complicated and will probably have to remain a means tested benefit.  That fucks up all their calculations, means the re-detributive impact won't work, and whats left is something that's a shit basic income that looks a lot like Universal Credit in terms of how much money people will end up with.  UC is a negative income tax, which is slightly different to a Basic Income, but only in principle really, in terms of how much money goes into your pocket they can function the same.  Most Basic Income proposals seem to assume that higher/mid range earners won't notice that they're just paying it all back in tax.  A shit Basic Income set at the rate of the dole, vs an unconditional Universal Credit is barely worth squabbling over, all it will mean is yet more welfare reform and yet more chaos for the people caught up in it.  Compass do talk about it being unconditional, thats a step forward, but instead of another grandiose project to keep everyone busy and try make politicians look clever why not just scrap fucking benefit sanctions.


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## Greebo (Jun 12, 2016)

smokedout said:


> <snip> instead of another grandiose project to keep everyone busy and try make politicians look clever why not just scrap fucking benefit sanctions.


Word!


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## youngian (Jun 12, 2016)

smokedout said:


> UC is a negative income tax, which is slightly different to a Basic Income, but only in principle really, in terms of how much money goes into your pocket they can function the same.  Most Basic Income proposals seem to assume that higher/mid range earners won't notice that they're just paying it all back in tax.  A shit Basic Income set at the rate of the dole, vs an unconditional Universal Credit is barely worth squabbling over, all it will mean is yet more welfare reform and yet more chaos for the people caught up in it.  Compass do talk about it being unconditional, thats a step forward, but instead of another grandiose project to keep everyone busy and try make politicians look clever why not just scrap fucking benefit sanctions.



However conclusive the evidence for a minimum income a politician in this country will always be on the back foot as the tabloids scream about the undeserving poor. Tax credits, negative income tax and child benefit all seem like variants of the idea but masking the concept to make it politically acceptable.


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## ItWillNeverWork (Jun 13, 2016)

Personally I think a better way to implement a politically acceptable basic income would be to nationalise the banking system and pass a law that says if you want to take out a loan to expand your business, you should have to cede ownership of part of it to a central fund in the form of dividend-paying shares. These dividends would then be used to fund a BI for all citizens that would accumulate over the years, with everyone having their own 'account' containing a portfolio of the entire nations' businesses.

It would achieve a similar outcome as a regular BI, but would tie in with the idea of private ownership more easily, and so may make it less disagreeable to certain segments of society. Kind of like how people recoil in anger at the idea of pensions being removed, people would feel the same about their own basic income account being taken away. People would feel the BI was _theirs_, rather than being a handout from the state.

*This is a random, Monday morning brain splurge, btw. The flaws in this idea are no doubt extensive.


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## butchersapron (Jun 23, 2016)

This is an interesting piece that looks at a few hidden assumptions behind left-basic-income supporters arguments - get in some real good blows. The tiny bit of maths at the start, don't let it put you off. And do read the very informative footnotes.

What is wrong with free money?



> They are sufficiently realistic to know that the provision for poor people in this society is premised on the success of capitalist enterprises in making profits. Their proposed unconditional provision for poor people is made rather conditional. That is, they appreciate that taxation to alleviate poverty should not threaten the endeavour which produces the poverty in the first place





> The question is not only whether maintaining the working class is a necessity and if paying benefits is too much of a burden for the budget, but also if paying this or that benefit is more or less useful for the might of the state compared to a bit of the NHS, higher education grants, more prison staff, a new weapon system and so on. This, too, is appreciated by proposals for a Universal Basic Income. Their unconditional provision for poor people is also made conditional on the national interest and the adequate allocation of funds for it. Their realism is demonstrated by alternative budget proposals which would enable the state to finance a Universal Basic Income without undermining other expenditures deemed necessary for its might.





> Yet, it is important especially for left-wing supporters of a Universal Basic Income to posit unity [note; the article talked previously about the conservative, libertarian and social democratic basic income approaches]. If only a few post-autonomist Marxists demanded a Universal Basic Income the demand would be as “realistic” as a call for a revolution. If, on the other hand, they can point to bourgeois economists like Krugman or Wolf, to a conservative US president like Nixon even, their project gets a veneer of seriousness and realism. By referring to the ink being spilt on a Universal Basic Income in the Economist and the FT these radical critics of society can point out how practical their suggestions are.





> In the name of realism these radical supporters of a Universal Basic Income want to end capitalism while presupposing its continued existence. If people are free from any compulsion to work for a capitalist company, this would destroy the capitalist mode of production. This, after all, relies on the workers to produce the products which are turned into profits. It also relies on the exclusion of workers from these products so that they can become profits. However, at the same time, the same supporters also ask the same capitalist firms to produce the profits to pay for freedom from them in the form of a Universal Basic Income. They want both: the continued existence – for now – of a capitalist mode of production where the reproduction of each and everyone is subjugated to profit and the end of this subjugation by providing everyone with what they need. They want companies to make profits, which relies on and produces the poverty of workers, while at the same time ending mass poverty. They want to maintain the exclusion from social wealth through the institution of private property and end this exclusion by giving everyone enough money. Whilst realism tells these supporters to make the provision of poor people conditional on the success of capitalist firms, it does not make them shy away from these paradoxes.


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## Treacle Toes (Sep 1, 2016)

John McDonnell wants to give every citizen in the UK a basic income


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## gorski (Sep 29, 2016)

For as long as there is no firm ground for a Revolution (hopefully not a violent one but deffo not a superficial one, which primarily changes our political/economic relations but does not involve a serious change in us - which can only happen gradually and dialectically entwined with societal/economic/political changes we forge through common, organised poly-centric struggle, I fear, with many ifs and buts...), there can only be this 'Capitalism lives' story (shame on us but that's where we are at the moment... for a while to come...)...

However, we can tame it and gradually change it, even considerably, starting with decommodification of....

https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Soc924-2011/924-2011-book-project/Esping-Andersen.pdf

Now, I know which one I would prefer, given the models we have today...

Are there adversarial models which have really done it for most people?


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## Fez909 (Dec 13, 2016)

BBC World Service - In the Balance, Universal Basic Income: Has its Time Come?

Haven't listened to this yet, but i'll be doing so when I get to work.


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## eoin_k (Dec 13, 2016)

butchersapron said:


> This is an interesting piece that looks at a few hidden assumptions behind left-basic-income supporters arguments - get in some real good blows. The tiny bit of maths at the start, don't let it put you off. And do read the very informative footnotes.
> 
> What is wrong with free money?



While they make some good points along the way, I'm surprised you seem so taken with it.

Gruppen gegen Kapital und Nation measure everything, including the more useful insights from workerism/autonomist Marxism about social reproduction and the flow of capital through the social factory, against their own highly formal reading of _Capital Vol. I_. It's easy to take the 'correct' line when your political practice consists of organising_ Capital reading _groups and writing essays about why everyone else is wrong (based on the same rehashed arguments about value theory).

More importantly, they leave out any historical account of how demands related to a guaranteed income, including those which were far from reasonable at the time, played out in the 1970s when the state actually expected workers to make different sorts of collective demands. While this would still leave open questions about the pitfalls of making such any such demands, the gap between that situation then and now seems like a much bigger problem for today's left-wing evangelists of the basic income. The absurdity of Paul Mason or Nick Srnicek raising demands for a basic income lies much more in how unaware they seem of their lack of leverage and their inattention to how things played out last time, when the balance of forces seemed much more favourable.


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## yield (Jan 1, 2017)

Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland
Sunday 1 January 2017


> Scotland looks set to be the first part of the UK to pilot a basic income for every citizen, as councils in Fife and Glasgow investigate trial schemes in 2017.
> 
> The councillor Matt Kerr has been championing the idea through the ornate halls of Glasgow City Chambers, and is frank about the challenges it poses.
> 
> ...


The UBI already exists for the 1%
Matt Bruenig


> The universal basic income — a cash payment made to every individual in the country — has been critiqued recently by some commentators. Among other things, these writers dislike the fact that a UBI would deliver individuals income in a way that is divorced from working. Such an income arrangement would, it is argued, lead to meaninglessness, social dysfunction, and resentment.
> 
> One obvious problem with this analysis is that passive income — income divorced from work — already exists. It is called capital income. It flows out to various individuals in society in the form of interest, rents, and dividends. According to Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (PSZ), around 30% of all the income produced in the nation is paid out as capital income.





> Tithing to the 1%
> 
> In 2015, according to PSZ, the richest 1% of people in America received 20.2% of all the income in the nation. Ten points of that 20.2% came from equity income, net interest, housing rents, and the capital component of mixed income. Which is to say, 10% of all national income is paid out to the 1% as capital income. Let me reiterate: 1 in 10 dollars of income produced in this country is paid out to the richest 1% without them having to work for it.
> 
> Even if you exclude the capital component of mixed income (since it is connected to work even if the income is not from labor) and housing rents (since these are imputed to homeowners rather than paid to them as cash), that still means that, from equity income and interest alone, the top 1% receives 7.5% of the national income without having to work for it. Put another way: the average person in the top 1% receives a UBI equal to 7.5 times the average income in the country.


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## weltweit (Jan 4, 2017)

Fez909 said:


> Articles/books on the subject etc are also welcome.
> 
> Cheers


Fez909 you might be interested in this:
India 'plans to give every citizen a universal basic income'


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## ska invita (Jan 4, 2017)

Finland two years trial has begun;

"Under the two-year, nationwide pilot scheme, which began on 1 January, 2,000 unemployed Finns aged 25 to 58 will receive a guaranteed sum of €560 (£475). The income will replace their existing social benefits and will be paid even if they find work."
Finland trials basic income for unemployed


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## butchersapron (Jan 4, 2017)

You can't really trial a universal basic income on 2000 people surrounded by non UBI relations in a state of 5 million people.Already it's being hemmed in by other considerations -  the need to reduce formal unemployment figures, cut 'red tape' in existing universal welfare provision, playing a role in the cutting of existing job seeker allowance, provioding free labour to undercut existing wage labour...sick joke.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

Basic income does seem to be an idea whose time has come. . . but that doesn't make it a good idea. The Finnish left is already sounding the alarm over what it sees as the real intention of that country's BI scheme - the final destruction of the welfare state:

“Government's main objective seems to be to dismantle welfare state,” says Andersson

ska invita


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## butchersapron (Jan 4, 2017)

Blimey. Who would have guessed that a capitalist state administered thing could not be  the free clean loving UBI of etc


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> Blimey. Who would have guessed that a capitalist state administered thing could not be  the free clean loving UBI of etc


You see, butchers - we plant the seed. Then nature grows the seed. Then we eat the seed.

Don't you want to be the change you want to see in the world?


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## butchersapron (Jan 4, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> You see, butchers - we plant the seed. Then nature grows the seed. Then we eat the seed.
> 
> Don't you want to be the change you want to see in the world?


have you been at your mums watching the old ones?

How on earth could this be put in place over than top down state fiat. And so, done in their interests. It's just making stuff up and saying that you like it.


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## kabbes (Jan 4, 2017)

I mentioned before I am currently reading Rise of the Robots .  There's a bit in there about a think tank in the 60s that included/influenced Martin Luther King (wish I could remember the detail) and wrote all kinds of stuff about how things would change in the 60s and 70s -- civil rights, social changes and the effect of automation.  The first two got all the play, particularly subsequently, but most of their output was actually about the last thing.

Anyway, this group were heavily into the idea of a basic wage, as being the only answer to the fact that automation was going to simultaneously create much greater national output whilst also putting everybody out of a job.  Apparently it made a few waves but got overtaken by the oil crisis of the 70s, then everybody forgot about it for three decades.

It's an interesting book, I recommend it.

ETA: the basic wage part is in a section that includes lots of interesting charts like this:


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> have you been at your mums watching the old ones?
> 
> How on earth could this be put in place over than top down state fiat. And so, done in their interests. It's just making stuff up and saying that you like it.


At my Mums I had to watch Frozen. Later I was allowed to watch Porridge, though, so it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.

OK, so it's going to be done in the interests of the haute bourgeoisie. Maybe we should brainstorm the political implications of its social outcomes. . .


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## butchersapron (Jan 4, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> At my Mums I had to watch Frozen. Later I was allowed to watch Porridge, though, so it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.
> 
> OK, so it's going to be done in the interests of the haute bourgeoisie. Maybe we should brainstorm the political implications of its social outcomes. . .


None. There will be none. It'll be lots of people saying none and what time does the bar open.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> None. There will be none. It'll be lots of people saying none and what time does the bar open.


Frozen's actually pretty good.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

Soma, or lube for the killbots?


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## ska invita (Jan 4, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> Basic income does seem to be an idea whose time has come. . . but that doesn't make it a good idea. The Finnish left is already sounding the alarm over what it sees as the real intention of that country's BI scheme - the final destruction of the welfare state:
> 
> “Government's main objective seems to be to dismantle welfare state,” says Andersson
> 
> ska invita



That article doesnt mention basic income. Andersson's party, the Left Alliance, along with the Finish Greens support basic income. Ive had a google around and from what i can see they have done for a few years and continue to do so today. Theyve been central to the campaign to introduce this pilot scheme.

This is from the Left Alliance manifesto page:
The Red-Green Future - Vasemmisto

*A SUITABLE AMOUNT OF WORK AND A SUFFICIENT INCOME FOR ALL*
*Goals:* In the red-green society, working hours are shortened and work is more evenly distributed among people. The concept of work is broadened so that it also includes forms of work that take place outside the markets. The basic income is used to ensure that all people have a sufficient basic income and the opportunity to engage in different types of work in the markets, households or communities. The gendered division of labour is dismantled in both the labour markets and homes. Enterprises are increasingly owned by the workers who have better opportunities to influence their own work. When people are free to choose how they work, such categories as the unemployed or pensioners will gradually become obsolete. Everyone can undertake work to benefit the society according to their own abilities, knowledge and skills.


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## butchersapron (Jan 4, 2017)

A SUITABLE AMOUNT OF WORK


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## Idris2002 (Jan 4, 2017)

THE PARTY OF MODERATE PROGRESS WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW


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## William of Walworth (Jan 7, 2017)

Idris2002 : So will being lazy enough to want never (now I'm over 50) to get up in the dark ever again, be classed as moderate progress, or dangerous extremism?

EARLY PENSIONS OR BRICKTHROWING


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## Idris2002 (Jan 7, 2017)

William of Walworth said:


> Idris2002 : So will being lazy enough to want never (now I'm over 50) to get up in the dark ever again, be classed as moderate progress, or dangerous extremism?
> 
> EARLY PENSIONS OR BRICKTHROWING


You think they won't fix it so you have to get up in the dark anyway, basic income or no basic income? LOL.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 7, 2017)

ska invita said:


> That article doesnt mention basic income. Andersson's party, the Left Alliance, along with the Finish Greens support basic income. Ive had a google around and from what i can see they have done for a few years and continue to do so today. Theyve been central to the campaign to introduce this pilot scheme.
> 
> This is from the Left Alliance manifesto page:
> The Red-Green Future - Vasemmisto
> ...


OK, point to you, that link doesn't mention BI directly. But why would you trust a government whose attitude to the welfare state is a malign one to introduce BI in a way that really will usher in the hippy utopia that so many mugs think BI will involve?


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2017)

I think some looking beyond what parties support BI and into what the state and capital requires and the gaps and contradictions, differing interests etc between the two would be a far more productive way for those types to proceed than just listing nominally left or green parties who support it.


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## ViolentPanda (Jan 7, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> Soma, or lube for the killbots?




Both.


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## ska invita (Jan 8, 2017)

Lord only knows who critisticuffs are, but if youre in London and you want to talk through the worries around UBI in a pub this is a chance to do so (30th Jan, 7pm)
Critisticuffs — Universal Basic Income: what's wrong with free money?


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## butchersapron (Jan 8, 2017)

The same lot who wrote the stuff in the link i posted in june last year.


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## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2017)

Not had the chance to read this to the end yet, but it looks like a very good take-down of the Finnish UBI experiment - a dagger pointed at the heart of the welfare state:

The UBI Bait and Switch | Jacobin


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Jan 18, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> Not had the chance to read this to the end yet, but it looks like a very good take-down of the Finnish UBI experiment - a dagger pointed at the heart of the welfare state:
> 
> The UBI Bait and Switch | Jacobin



It's a bit of an odd article IMO. There's a lot about the political background behind what they're doing, the intentions in the implementation, and the differing views of the various parties, but nothing at all on what the actual results of the experiment were.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> It's a bit of an odd article IMO. There's a lot about the political background behind what they're doing, the intentions in the implementation, and the differing views of the various parties, but nothing at all on what the actual results of the experiment were.


the pilot scheme only jut started the other day


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> the pilot scheme only jut started the other day



It's massively overstating it's case then IMO - there's valid points about the different reasons for promoting the idea but something like this:



> In December, the government’s UBI experiment was enacted into law. By early January — after Kela randomly selected two thousand people from its unemployment rolls and informed them of their mandatory participation in the experiment — the government had made its first monthly UBI payment.
> 
> And just like that, what started as the dream proposal of left-leaning wonks everywhere had, once filtered through the political process, mutated into the UBI-as-workhouse nightmare.



Is something to suggest once you have some actual evidence of the outcome IMO.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> It's massively overstating it's case then IMO - there's valid points about the different reasons for promoting the idea but something like this:
> 
> Is something to suggest once you have some actual evidence of the outcome IMO.


just checked, the pilot started 1st jan 2017

i cant read the article at the moment to comment


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## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2017)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> It's a bit of an odd article IMO. There's a lot about the political background behind what they're doing, the intentions in the implementation, and the differing views of the various parties, but nothing at all on what the actual results of the experiment were.


I hate to take your attention away from the bright shiny object you are besotted with, but it's an article about the current state of play regarding the Finnish UBI project and its broader political context. From that, we should be able to extrapolate the further, future trajectory of that project - and I don't think the results of that trajectory are going to be encouraging for anyone who believes that societies should be geninely free and equal.


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Jan 18, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> I hate to take your attention away from the bright shiny object you are besotted with, but it's an article about the current state of play regarding the Finnish UBI project and its broader political context. From that, we should be able to extrapolate the further, future trajectory of that project - and I don't think the results of that trajectory are going to be encouraging for anyone who believes that societies should be geninely free and equal.



Bright shiny object? I don't think you'll find any massive enthusiasm for basic income from me anywhere on here so I've no idea what you're on about there.  Personally I'd share that scepticism tbh and they might well be right in the end. That doesn't mean I have to agree with the whole article though.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> Not had the chance to read this to the end yet, but it looks like a very good take-down of the Finnish UBI experiment - a dagger pointed at the heart of the welfare state:
> 
> The UBI Bait and Switch | Jacobin


you should read it really, because its a terrible article. Despite all the emotive negative language and insinuation it doesn't put forward any evidence that its a bad thing, or not working positively for the people involved.

The one incriminating piece of information seems to be that the 'Centre' party are interested to see the effect on UBI on those in long term unemployment, and how it might support low paying jobs. So what? That's great if you're in a low paying job - and many of us are and always will be.

I'm over 40 now, and I've never earned more than £10 per hour. I've signed on twice in my life for a few months, with no savings. Both when signing and now working, if I was to receive £600 a month I'd be delighted. That doesn't make it a "workhouse nightmare", it changes my quality of life for the better in unimaginable ways. I'd love that "workhouse nightmare"!!

If UBI becomes dependent on x y and z job seeking hoops (which already exist for our shitty dole), then thats a worry, but thats not what's happened here, and not what should ever be suggested with UBI. The Universal bit means its Universal, and doesn't require anything of the person receiving it.

Im all up for being critical about UBI, but that article above, nor the one you posted before, have got anything in them to go on.


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## butchersapron (Jan 18, 2017)

The suggestion is that it will allow - no, _encourage _-  capital to _create _shit jobs with low pay with state subsidy (effectively a tax on the w/c) and growth in low-paying jobs acts a a drag anchor on wages generally. Not that it would support people already working for low wages.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

Not sure capital needs encouragement on that front. In fact, with a fallback of £600 a month, Id expect there to be less desperation to take up shit jobs.

The long term effects on an economy/society are un-modelable really. There are so many variables.


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## butchersapron (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> Not sure capital needs encouragement on that front. In fact, with a fallback of £600 a month, Id expect there to be less desperation to take up shit jobs.
> 
> The long term effects on an economy/society are un-modelable really. There are so many variables.


It needing encouragement to act in that way is neither here nor there really  - it will take it when it's offered on such charitable terms. My point though was that the article didn't say the proposers of the move were doing it to support low paid workers. Quite the opposite.

How do you see tax credits working in this country btw? Most people view them as an indirect subsidy to capital taken - in part at least - from those low paid workers it allows to work for such shit wages and the rest from other workers in general. Any reason why that same dynamic wouldn't apply here?


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## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> Not sure capital needs encouragement on that front. In fact, with a fallback of £600 a month, Id expect there to be less desperation to take up shit jobs.
> 
> The long term effects on an economy/society are un-modelable really. There are so many variables.


Capital needs desperate people to take shit jobs. If the desperate really save from one sort of desperation because they had £600 big ones a month, don't you think some other form of desperation would be arranged?


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> don't you think some other form of desperation would be arranged?


Whats that then?


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## Idris2002 (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> Whats that then?


Use your imagination. Capital will.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> How do you see tax credits working in this country btw? Most people view them as an indirect subsidy to capital taken - in part at least - from those low paid workers it allows to work for such shit wages and the rest from other workers in general. Any reason why that same dynamic wouldn't apply here?



Tax credits make it affordable for people to work in low paid work as a subsidy against said shit wage.
I can see that.
Same is true for housing benefit of course, which is ploughing huge amounts of tax money into landlords hands and propping up rental/housing market prices.

But maybe the issue here is just how much you get in the UBI. £600 is a good sum. I'd expect its a huge amount more than you might get in a tax credit payment. 

The question for me boils down to would the unemployed and workers in low paid jobs be better or worse off. If they're better off, then that counts for a lot in my book. A step up is a step up.

Would UBI create a broader wage suppression/depression? Would it have an inflationary effect that would cancel out the benefits? Others have theorised on this, and not surprisingly those who want UBI to succeed reckon it will all be better than fine. Their work is out there.... 

The thing is its impossible to know until its tried. 



Idris2002 said:


> Use your imagination. Capital will.


ive got enough to worry about to start worrying about all the ills of the world that are yet to be invented


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## brogdale (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> The question for me boils down to *would the unemployed and workers in low paid jobs be better or worse off*. If they're better off, then that counts for a lot in my book. A step up is a step up.
> 
> The thing is its impossible to know until its tried.


Capital would ensure that it is pitched at _their '_sweet-spot' that would simultaneously stimulate aggregate demand (consumption) whilst not dissuading too many people to abandon the work-force. So my guess would be little different for the former, but possibly lower for the latter; remember that UBI would see all other benefits go by the wayside.
IMO the key to understanding UBI is appreciating that corp taxes will be so low and rich individual tax dodging so high that UBI will merely represent the churning of demand within the economically active population.


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## ska invita (Jan 18, 2017)

BTW you still get housing benefit on top of UBI in the Finnish experiment, IIRC

I think £600 is probably a bit above that 'sweet spot' amount, in that other programs have considered lower levels, and explicitly said what youve said - that they dont want anyone to be better off than they are now! I forget where and when that was now, but its probably back in this thread somewhere.... The amount dished out makes a huge difference as to the nature of it IMO.


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## brogdale (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> BTW you still get housing benefit on top of UBI in the Finnish experiment, IIRC
> 
> I think £600 is probably a bit above that 'sweet spot' amount, in that other programs have considered lower levels, and explicitly said what youve said - that they dont want anyone to be better off than they are now! I forget where and when that was now, but its probably back in this thread somewhere.... *The amount dished out makes a huge difference as to the nature of it IMO.*



Yes; crucial...obviously.

IMO (again), unless there is another financial melt-down, we won't see its like until corp tax is (officially) much closer to zero; capital would have to be assured that they will not be seeing any threat to their accumulation from the demand stimulation package.


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## redsquirrel (Jan 18, 2017)

ska invita said:


> If UBI becomes dependent on x y and z job seeking hoops (which already exist for our shitty dole), then thats a worry, but thats not what's happened here, and not what should ever be suggested with UBI. The Universal bit means its Universal, and doesn't require anything of the person receiving it.


Apart from it's not universal is it. It's 2000 people who are unemployed and typically have been unemployed for a long time. 

And the Government introducing this pilot has said itself that the aim is to 





> “Social security needs to be developed to secure the basic subsistence for each person as well as to encourage people to seek and accept work. The impact of a universal basic income system must be tested and developed through regional trials.”


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## Purdie (Feb 2, 2017)

Dutch law does not even allow a basic income without 'having to do anything in return' 
The experiment would have seen them get just over 900Euro but no extras whatsoever so probably no housing benefit either.
Minister says no to Terneuzen basic income experiment - DutchNews.nl


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## gorski (Feb 3, 2017)

Indeed, these things depend on so many other pieces of the puzzle, like affordable quality housing or good quality, cheap public transport, low prices of decent quality food and so on. On average, even in what is now a neo-lib Netherlands, these things are better than in the UK by far...

Of course, laws can be changed - depending on all else - politicians' minds in particular...


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## yield (Mar 29, 2017)

Soft left response, and not without its problems, but worth a read.

No need for basic income: Five policies to deal with the threat of technological unemployment
27 March 2017


> The core idea of the basic income is based on a libertarian view of society. Implementing it would individualize many aspects of our daily lives that are currently organized collectively. The policy mix proposed above, on the other hand, would not just provide effective protection against the potential downsides of the digital revolution but at the same time create tools to strengthen communities and reduce inequality.
> 
> The debate about how to respond to the digital revolution in policy terms will be one of the crucial discussions in the years to come. Basic income is just one – and highly problematic for the reasons outlined here. There are also other ways to address this issue.


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## ska invita (Mar 29, 2017)

yield said:


> Soft left response, and not without its problems, but worth a read.
> 
> No need for basic income: Five policies to deal with the threat of technological unemployment
> 27 March 2017


The case against UBI made there is a weak one, and I cant be bothered to make a counter argument on my lunch break but to address the positive case:



> First, education systems clearly need to adapt more to new economic realities than they have so far. Education should be less about memorizing/retaining information and more focused on turning that information into knowledge as well as teaching transferable creative, analytical and social skills. Technical skills might become obsolete very quickly but the ability to be creative, adapt and engage in continuous learning will always remain valuable.


Fine, good luck. Theres a hundred ways education should be different, little ever seems to change, but lets leave that for now.



> Second, if there is large-scale technological unemployment, re-allocating the remaining work should be a first step. It might not be the 15-hour work week that John Maynard Keynes envisaged for his grandchildren but where possible such a policy would make sense and be a first re-balancing tool.


What does that mean in practice? Sounds like shorter working week / job sharing. That results in massive wage cuts which leads back to UBI. In fact this is an expected consequence of UBI. Definitely not mutually exclusive.



> Third, public policy-makers should be thinking about job guarantee schemes that would complement the normal labor market. Guaranteeing paid activity in this way would kick in when traditional jobs are lost; it would keep people active and able to use their skills. If governments acted as an ‘employer of last resort’ this would avert scarring effects and could actively promote up-skilling if, as it should be, requalification/retraining were a core element of the guaranteed activity.
> 
> As such a scheme would in effect decouple the payment for an activity from its content it creates an additional public policy tool to incentivize socially beneficial activities. A job guarantee could, for instance, be effectively used to upgrade the health and care sectors, where on current demographic trends more human labor is required in the future. It could also be used to fund sports and other cultural activities locally and thus strengthen social cohesion in communities.
> 
> ...


Sounds like the workhouse v2.0 to me...no thanks. Id rather get money for not working than getting money for some bullshit-job forced full-employment program


> This leads us to the fifth and final point: democratizing capital ownership. If the robot-owners are the winners in this brave new digital world then as many people as possible should have ownership stakes. This can work at both the individual and the macro level. At company level, models such as the ‘workers share’ could spread ownership amongst employees so workers individually become less reliant on income from wages. At the macro level special purpose financial vehicles could be created to re-socialize capital returns. These could be sovereign investment funds that would work along the lines of university endowments or sovereign wealth funds and create new public revenue streams that could then be used to help fund the job guarantee.


AKA Blair's Stakeholder society...a scourge. Nationalise industry by all means, but this whole make everyone a shareholder thing is already a creeping disaster, which will hopefully be buried after the next imminent crash once we all lose our pensions.


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## yield (Mar 30, 2017)

All fair criticisms ska. The article is unclear on the details and possible outcomes as you say.

The best argument for basic income I've seen is Matt Bruenig's I posted months back. The 1% receive massive unearned rentier income so why shouldn't everyone.

Even so I'm wary of silver bullets and still have my doubts though.

Edit to add - It's going to be very interesting what the political classes response will be to automation of well paying middle class jobs.


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## squirrelp (Mar 30, 2017)

butchersapron said:


> The suggestion is that it will allow - no, _encourage _-  capital to _create _shit jobs with low pay with state subsidy (effectively a tax on the w/c) and growth in low-paying jobs acts a a drag anchor on wages generally. Not that it would support people already working for low wages.


But it would precisely support those on low wages, that's exactly the point of it. You get basic income on top of everything else that you earn.

The subsidy is not the employer, it is to the recipient.


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## squirrelp (Mar 30, 2017)

Idris2002 said:


> Capital needs desperate people to take shit jobs. If the desperate really save from one sort of desperation because they had £600 big ones a month, don't you think some other form of desperation would be arranged?


????
what and how?


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## weltweit (Jul 7, 2017)

Hawaii just became the first US state to support a universal basic income


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## butchersapron (Jul 7, 2017)

weltweit said:


> Hawaii just became the first US state to support a universal basic income



No it didn't.


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## weltweit (Jul 7, 2017)

It is a slightly misleading article title is that is what you mean.


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## redsquirrel (Jul 8, 2017)

It's utterly misleading and a completely empty article - like every article in the Indie these days. 

Pure liberal clickbait


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## Yossarian (Jul 8, 2017)

.


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## patman post (Jul 10, 2017)

Rutita1 said:


> John McDonnell wants to give every citizen in the UK a basic income


Happy with that — provided I can also work and get paid.

I see someone's reckoned that anyone in London on average income is likely to see their house making more than they do in a year...


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## Magnus McGinty (Jul 10, 2017)

Eventually, with automation, Capital will find itself with no consumers if all its workers are robots so it needs to deal with this contradiction. Unless the robots just produce for the ruling class in which case the rest of us aren't needed any more if we also require resources to live.
I admit I haven't fully thought this through but it isn't something I'd support as a mechanism of Capitalism because it won't be socialist.


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## Crispy (Jul 10, 2017)

Yep. Any Basic Income run by capital to keep itself afloat will be very Basic indeed. The robots should be owned by everyone, for the benefit of everyone.


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## kabbes (Jul 10, 2017)

patman post said:


> I see someone's reckoned that anyone in London on average income is likely to see their house making more than they do in a year...


Unless house prices drop, in which case they may see their house cost them their entire year's income.


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## DotCommunist (Jul 10, 2017)

Magnus McGinty said:


> Eventually, with automation, Capital will find itself with no consumers if all its workers are robots so it needs to deal with this contradiction. Unless the robots just produce for the ruling class in which case the rest of us aren't needed any more if we also require resources to live.
> I admit I haven't fully thought this through but it isn't something I'd support as a mechanism of Capitalism because it won't be socialist.



and sooner or later the inconvenient useless mouths will have to be dealt with. Humanely of course. Look at the likes of that freak theil, it'd be sterilise the working class. They have become a burden.


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## DotCommunist (Jul 10, 2017)

it could work under a socialist framework tho, bt, thats not who are speculating on it in the pink paper etc


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## Celyn (Jul 10, 2017)

patman post said:


> Happy with that — provided I can also work and get paid.
> 
> I see someone's reckoned that anyone in London on average income is likely to see their house making more than they do in a year...



Yes, but it would in most cases mean that the benefit of all this money goes straight to the landlord.


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## patman post (Jul 10, 2017)

Celyn said:


> Yes, but it would in most cases mean that the benefit of all this money goes straight to the landlord.


"Their house" as distinct from home that they rent. And yes, there are home owners on average salaries in London — probably just not any who have bought in the last decade...


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## Celyn (Jul 10, 2017)

DotCommunist said:


> it could work under a socialist framework tho, bt, thats not who are speculating on it in the pink paper etc


"You poor take courage
you rich take care ...


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## mojo pixy (Jul 10, 2017)

We're still a long, long way from _common treasury_ though


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## mojo pixy (Jul 10, 2017)

in a way a basic income would make desperate poverty OK because technically it'd no longer exist, or so we'd be told.


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## Crispy (Jul 11, 2017)

mojo pixy said:


> in a way a basic income would make desperate poverty OK because technically it'd no longer exist, or so we'd be told.


This at least would probably be true.



Hooray for equality


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## mojo pixy (Jul 11, 2017)

Not to mention the many who would doubtless, for one reason or another, not receive it at all.


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## Crispy (Jul 11, 2017)

What annoys me about those "by percentile" income charts is that the percentiles are too coarse. The distribution is logarithmic. If you split the right-most bar into 10, the right-most of those bars would be off the screen. Split _that_ bar into ten and the right-most would be through the ceiling.


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## kabbes (Jul 11, 2017)

Crispy said:


> What annoys me about those "by percentile" income charts is that the percentiles are too coarse. The distribution is logarithmic. If you split the right-most bar into 10, the right-most of those bars would be off the screen. Split _that_ bar into ten and the right-most would be through the ceiling.


I'm not sure what it's showing either.  I'm pretty sure that the top 1% all earn more than £100k, but that chart tops out at £100k.  So it can't be the average income in the band.  In which case, what is it?


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## BigTom (Jul 11, 2017)

kabbes said:


> I'm not sure what it's showing either.  I'm pretty sure that the top 1% all earn more than £100k, but that chart tops out at £100k.  So it can't be the average income in the band.  In which case, what is it?



£150k was set as the band for the 50% tax rate when Gordon Brown introduced that in 2008 or 09, because that's where the 1% highest earnings start. Presumably would be a little higher now after 10 years of inflation and pay rises.


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## kabbes (Jul 11, 2017)

BigTom said:


> £150k was set as the band for the 50% tax rate when Gordon Brown introduced that in 2008 or 09, because that's where the 1% highest earnings start. Presumably would be a little higher now after 10 years of inflation and pay rises.


To be fair, it is post-tax income rather than pre-tax.  But if you earn £150k, your take-home is £91,000 (interpreting "post-tax" as "post-tax and NI").  So it still seems really unlikely that the top 1% would average just a little over £100k.  That top 1% includes those earning _millions_.

ETA: found it.  It's the percentile points from 1 to 99.  So it shows where the top 1% starts, not its average.

So yeah, really misleading.  Most people would interpret it as being some kind of average wage in the band, not where the band starts.  It implies the distribution of wealth is way more even than it actually is.

(It's also taxpayers only, so it ignores all the people not earning enough to pay tax on one side of the axis, as well as those siphoning all their income off to tax havens on the other side).


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## Crispy (Jul 11, 2017)

I should have taken the axes off


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## Paul__Macca (Jul 14, 2017)

Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me. 
It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing. 
And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.


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## mojo pixy (Jul 14, 2017)

You think that only ppl who work at something you approve of should be able to afford food? That's stupid, and mean.


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## Santino (Jul 14, 2017)

Paul__Macca said:


> Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me.
> It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing.
> And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.


Let it be.


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## Crispy (Jul 14, 2017)

Paul__Macca said:


> Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me.
> It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing.
> And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.


"New Member"


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## Idris2002 (Jul 14, 2017)

Paul__Macca said:


> Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me.
> It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing.
> And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.


You never give me your money.


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## DotCommunist (Jul 14, 2017)

Paul__Macca said:


> Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me.
> It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing.
> And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.


post up your tax returns again


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## Idris2002 (Jul 14, 2017)

DotCommunist said:


> post up your tax returns again


You only give me your funny papers.


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## ViolentPanda (Jul 14, 2017)

patman post said:


> Happy with that — provided I can also work and get paid.
> 
> I see someone's reckoned that anyone in London on average income is likely to see their house making more than they do in a year...



Only if you average out prices across London.  If you take individual boroughs, then the story is more like "the majority would barely make a penny, some rich fucks in small enclaves across the capital, will make a killing".


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## ViolentPanda (Jul 14, 2017)

DotCommunist said:


> and sooner or later the inconvenient useless mouths will have to be dealt with. Humanely of course. Look at the likes of that freak theil, it'd be sterilise the working class. They have become a burden.



So effectively we'll revisit the more vile practices of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and the US.  More neo-Victorianism than you can shake a shitty stick at.


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## ViolentPanda (Jul 14, 2017)

Crispy said:


> "New Member"



Emphasis on "member".


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## ViolentPanda (Jul 14, 2017)

Paul__Macca said:


> Most of the time, if you earn enough to get taxed 40% it's through hard work rather than luck or family. Like me.
> It sounds like you lot want a whole bunch of money for doing nothing.
> And that -- quite frankly -- is obscene.



"You lot"?  Nice generalisation.  You don't earn enough to pay 40% anyway, except in your Thatcher-sodomising fantasies.


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## eoin_k (Jul 14, 2017)

ViolentPanda said:


> Emphasis on "member".



Never to achieve his clear potential to become a 'well known member'.


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## Santino (Jul 14, 2017)

When did he join? It only seems like Yesterday.


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## ska invita (Mar 14, 2019)

Interesting suggestion this
Axe personal allowance and pay everyone £48 a week, says thinktank
backed by McDonnell
means tested (everyone earning under 125k ) gets £48 a week on top of existing benefit structure, but in place of the tax-free personal allowance. Looks a lot like slight of hand, take from one pot give to the other...but the "88% of all adults would see their post-tax income rise or stay the same, helping to lift 200,000 families across the country out of poverty" suggests 12% of people, most likely highest earners, would lose out (good) and get taxed a bit more.

I wonder though how you physically receive the £48 pounds. Also is it universal or do you have to be in employment? Not clear from the article.

So overall sounds a bit like fiddling about rather than any major change, but sounds like it would introduce the principle of basic income and sounds like low incomers would be a bit better off, and richer people pay more tax.

re personal allowance: supposedly (more on it in that thread)


---


Also

What is There to Learn From Finland’s Basic Income Experiment? Did It Succeed or Fail?


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## MickiQ (Mar 14, 2019)

It says in the first couple of paragraphs every adult over 18, not replacing benefits and not dependent on having a job. I don't know how it would be paid but I would imagine you will need a bank account and it will get paid into it at regular intervals hopefully getting a choice of weekly or monthly).
For the vast majority of people it will make no difference since the cost to the state and the benefit to the individual will basically be the same.
There will be an extra cost involved in paying it to non-working adults or those earning less than that but hopefully much if not all of that would be offset by higher rate taxpayers paying a bit more due to them both losing their personal allowance and paying more due to the higher band threshold falling.
I think this is a frigging brilliant idea, As the robots take more and more jobs we are at some point in the future going to have to move to a proper basic income with working becoming optional and this seems like an easy step along that road.


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## Badgers (Sep 16, 2020)

Apparently this week is 'International Basic Income Week' probably the right time for this to really be pushed  

Just had an email from the good chaps at Action Network but I doubt it will get a big turnout in these covid times. 









						Basic Income March
					

Join us for Basic Income March. Our economy is leaving millions behind. Join the people powered movement to send the message that our society and economy needs to evolve to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Get involved. Get inspired. Together, we can make historic change.




					www.basicincomemarch.com


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## Magnus McGinty (Sep 16, 2020)

Basic income would be amazing in a just society. Not sure how it would work where profit is king as that concept goes against that of a free market economy. A type of Fordism where money can be distributed as discounts against certain goods?


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## RhedwrBontgoch (Oct 5, 2020)

I'm quit tempted by the principle, but fear it would be too hard to sell to our current society. A lot of groundwork needed to persuade people it's doable.


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## Marty1 (Oct 5, 2020)

Fez909 said:


> Thread was a bit of a mess, tbh. I'm surprised there was negative feeling about it, too. How about we give it another go (unless you find the bigger thread)?
> 
> Definition of basic income: a universal payment to every citizen of the country whether they work or not, rich or poor, whatever. It would be set high enough that you could live on this (so a 'living wage'?), paying for housing, food, bills, etc. If you want to work, then you keep your basic income in full, and your wages top it up (subject to the normal deductions and so on). This is how I understand it working from the little I've read on it so far. No other benefits would exist. Please correct me if I'm wrong!
> 
> ...



Yeah, fuck it, trial it here first in the U.K.

Be great to see companies like Amazon having to pay people what the jobs really worth + extra to entice people  - be a bit like reverse exploitation.


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## ddraig (Oct 5, 2020)

Senedd backs call for UBI 
https://seneddhome.com/2020/10/sene...asic-income-trial-but-its-unlikely-to-happen/


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## Doodler (Oct 6, 2020)

UB might be better than make-work schemes designed to keep people occupied. A lot of the work offered by the Community Programme in the 1980s had that feel to it, although some friends ended up repairing dry stone walls for farmers, which they generally enjoyed doing and thought useful.

ETA: but can't help feel that there is a kind of pragmatic fatalism to UB. as if to say capital has won forever and the best hope is to be given a stipend and left alone.


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## friendofdorothy (Oct 14, 2020)

Badgers said:


> Apparently this week is 'International Basic Income Week' probably the right time for this to really be pushed
> 
> Just had an email from the good chaps at Action Network but I doubt it will get a big turnout in these covid times.
> 
> ...


I wonder if introducting a decedent basic income now would be cheaper than the piecemeal scatter gun approach this govt has to spending billions supporting some jobs / industries?


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## Badgers (Oct 15, 2020)

Always has been, always will be.


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## bellaozzydog (Nov 8, 2020)

ChrisFilter said:


> I think it's a stupid idea. It would lead to even greater social division, no-one would do the shit jobs, it would create even more massive resentment to those who want to work but can't (strivers vs skivers on steroids) and there's no way we'd ever be able to pay for it. Why bother working if you'd be taxed from the first pound at 50% or whatever it would need to fund it?



have you read anything on it? Studies, actual small scale experiments etc?


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## ddraig (Nov 8, 2020)

bellaozzydog said:


> have you read anything on it? Studies, actual small scale experiments etc?


Filter's post from 2013
Maybe/hopefully they've changed their view!
Hope Filter is well whatever


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## Duncan2 (Nov 8, 2020)

The main reason I am in favour of BI is that it has the potential to prevent a fairly appalling waste of life.Graeber called them bullshit jobs and there is no doubt that big employers can easily afford to have scores of workers hanging about just hoping to be given something to do to while away their forty hours. Where work fluctuates from hour to hour and season to season this is probably necessary to some extent but it really isn't good for the mental health of individual workers many of whom these days are over-qualified and well capable of putting their time to good use could they afford to do so.Bring on BI I would say.


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## Wolveryeti (Nov 8, 2020)

I am more hopeful of rental/housing reform as a route to bettering people's lives than UBI. Too easy for apparently beneficial increases in income to be totally swallowed up in rent due to our totally dysfunctional housing market.

Also agree with those who are saying that the politically feasible level of UBI will not be enough to deliver realistic economic freedom (i.e. choice to not do exploitative jobs) to the majority of the working population.


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## ska invita (Aug 21, 2021)

Could Scots be guaranteed a minimum income?
					

The government is to start work on plans for an income guarantee scheme aimed at wiping out poverty in Scotland.



					www.bbc.co.uk
				




"An MIG differs from a UBI in important ways. Crucially, it is targeted at those on lower incomes, rather than being universal.
It would be paid out via a variety of sources, including tax reliefs, social security benefits and services in kind, like childcare and transport."

...

The IPPR suggested a "core entitlement" of £792 for a single person of working age per month, or £1,224 for a couple, with a further payment of £267 for the first child in a household and £224 for each additional child. These figures would "taper off" if an adult in the household was in work.
However, the exact figures could fluctuate based on the cost of things like food and housing. For example, if rents were to go up substantially, the housing payment part of the MIG would need to rise as well.
One of the key challenges in working out an MIG scheme would be calculating what constitutes a minimum acceptable income in any given time or place.

...

Meanwhile, the IPPR report targets having an MIG in place by 2030 - so towards the end of the _next _parliamentary term.

....

*By making it so means tested and reduced even if low paid working doesnt that massively disincentivise low paid work? It would be interesting to see how much more somoeone on full benefits in Scotland gets vs this new figure - whats the difference?And the crucial difference is does it bin the need to jump through Job Seekers hoops etc?


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## kabbes (Aug 21, 2021)

My concern with this MIG versus a UI is that it just subsidises employers who can then get away with paying less than a living wage. And the usual problems with non-universal benefits: they are always on the back foot politically.


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## ska invita (Aug 21, 2021)

MIG looks like a watered down BI, but if the amount of money is equal or better than at present and you don't have to do all the job seeker sanctions crap then on that alone its a massive step forward 

*The bit about how you get the money is potentially dodgy too... Depends how big the cash element is


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## Badgers (Aug 21, 2021)

kabbes said:


> My concern with this MIG versus a UI is that it just subsidises employers who can then get away with paying less than a living wage. And the usual problems with non-universal benefits: they are always on the back foot politically.


So the government needs to regulate better you say?


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## kabbes (Aug 21, 2021)

Badgers said:


> So the government needs to regulate better you say?


Or killing with fire


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## Part 2 (Feb 18, 2022)

Wales to trial basic income with care leavers.









						Basic income pilot scheme for care leavers to be trialled in Wales
					

Young people leaving care to be offered £1600 a month for two years from the month after their 18th birthday




					www.theguardian.com


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## ska invita (Feb 18, 2022)

Part 2 said:


> Wales to trial basic income with care leavers.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


good amount, £1600 a month IIRC


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## 8ball (Feb 18, 2022)

I hope they get supported properly.  Having this money for two years and then being abruptly cut off could be a real problem even for kids with no history of trauma etc.


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## Part 2 (Feb 18, 2022)

8ball said:


> I hope they get supported properly.  Having this money for two years and then being abruptly cut off could be a real problem even for kids with no history of trauma etc.


Yea, having worked with care leavers for over 20 years, I'm undecided whether they're the best study group.

I've seen young people blow massive amounts of compensation money in very short spaces of time. They'll have a lot of friends.


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## 8ball (Feb 18, 2022)

Part 2 said:


> Yea, having worked with care leavers for over 20 years, I'm undecided whether they're the best study group.
> 
> I've seen young people blow massive amounts of compensation money in very short spaces of time. They'll have a lot of friends.



Well, at least it doesn't come all at once, I suppose.


----------

