I Think People Should be Paid not to Work, if That's What They Want: Switzerland to vote

[Masonity]

I think the Greens themselves admitted it was unworkable when somebody had the gall to ask, "So how you going to pay for that?" and the Greens said, "Well we aren't going to get elected so we don't need to think about that Er, it's a long term aspiration."

No we didn't. In fact I believe it was fully costed in the full manifesto, and when you take into account the savings from benefits a citizen's income would replace it didn't cost that much. And that was by discounting the direct benefits it would replace, not even counting the cost savings of not having to means test anyone. I don't have the figures to hand but they were bouncing around a lot around election time. I'll probably try to dig it out later.

 

As for who would work (someone else's comment, not Varys's), I'd rather work and have a good life than sit at home and have a barely surviving life. When a citizens income guarantees your basic requirements to live are met, every penny you earn from work is money you can spend bettering your lifestyle. That's a fucking huge incentive to work and might actually encourage people currently in benefit traps to work / work more too. 

 

There's a bunch of side benefits too, like encouraging entrepreneurship and creativity by providing a safety net, which are ultimately more important to the British economy than Checkout peon #657..

 

 

edit: https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto.pdf

Seems the citizens income wasn't a manifesto policy, but rather a longer term aim, so wasn't costed here. I must have seen it costed elsewhere. My apologies. I'll try to dig out some costings later that showed that it was viable, or at the very least considerable.

 

 

edit2: Ah, here we go. https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/Policy files/Basic Income Consultation Paper.pdf

 

Fully costed. And if the full package was implemented as suggested in this policy consultation paper it would quite literally pay for itself, in the first year at least

- a Basic Income for 2015–16 at JSA level for working-age people (£80 pw),

- Child Benefits more than doubled (to £50 pw),

- an £80 pw supplement for single parents,

- pensioners receiving £180 pw for a single pensioner and £310 pw for a couple, both a little above the official poverty line,

- with provision for extra transitional disability payments and an emergency

 

Basic Income payment scheme can be paid for by

- abolishing all the existing benefits, including tax credits, other than Housing Benefit and certain other working-age benefits, some pensioner concessions and disability benefits,

- abolishing the income tax personal allowance and the primary and secondary thresholds on National Insurance contributions,

- removing almost half the tax and National Insurance incentives for private pension contributions.

[Altherion]

Altherion,

And that collectivist view of agracultural production worked very well in the Soviet Union, didn't it?

This was not the view of the Soviet Union at all. Again, it is not fundamentally different from what we have in the United States today -- we pool our resources via taxes and give a share to those who have no jobs. The only difference is that our current approach is piecemeal, inefficient and causes problems such as unemployment traps.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Leap,

When has purely collectivist agraculture worked well in a modern society?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Leap,

When has purely collectivist agraculture worked well in a modern society?

Who is proposing "collectivist" agriculture in this thread?

You seem to be completely misunderstanding the basic proposal and principles under discussion.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

TAT's proposal is for more than "basic".  He wants people to be able to live happily without working if they choose.  Even Fabian socialism demands labor from the members of a collective.  If people may do nothing and live comfortably what does that say about the "labor theory of value"?  Are people not entitled to compensation for what they produce?

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Would there not be an inflationary impact from this?

As in, let's say everyone gets $20k dollars a year for free.

So now, let's say they want to aspire to more, and they also do a job then, which pays $30k. So that person now earns $50k in total, where before he would only have earned $30k.

So if this applies to everyone who previously earned $30k, then the guys that used to supply say rental accommodation to this class of people will now be able to charge more for this essential commodity, as there are now millions more people who are able to pay more for it.

In short, where your living expenses were previously $30k, supply and demand would now drive it up to $50k, leaving you in exactly the same boat.

In fact, those who now get $20k from doing nothing will likely be worse off than those who used to get $20k for menial labor, as ‌$20k now buys you less than it did before.

[Altherion]

TAT's proposal is for more than "basic".  He wants people to be able to live happily without working if they choose.  Even Fabian socialism demands labor from the members of a collective.  If people may do nothing and live comfortably what does that say about the "labor theory of value"?  Are people not entitled to compensation for what they produce?

People are entitled to compensation for their work and they will get it even with universal basic income. Somebody who has a job will always make more money than somebody who does not. The labor theory of value was developed mainly before and during the earliest stage of the rise of the machines and it does not do a good job of accounting for the latter.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Altherion,

But doesn't "stepped up basic" imply that those on it are entitled to everything others have earned despite contributing nothing material to a given society?  Doesn't that reduce the value of the labor others are exerting?

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Would there not be an inflationary impact from this?

As in, let's say everyone gets $20k dollars a year for free.

So now, let's say they want to aspire to more, and they also do a job then, which pays $30k. So that person now earns $50k in total, where before he would only have earned $30k.

So if this applies to everyone who previously earned $30k, then the guys that used to supply say rental accommodation to this class of people will now be able to charge more for this essential commodity, as there are now millions more people who are able to pay more for it.

In short, where your living expenses were previously $30k, supply and demand would now drive it up to $50k, leaving you in exactly the same boat.

In fact, those who now get $20k from doing nothing will likely be worse off than those who used to get $20k for menial labor, as ‌$20k now buys you less than it did before.

It seems you would have to put controls in place to prevent this from happening, allowing only for basic inflation/cost of living increases.  (which recently have only been a few percentage points)

[OnionAhaiReborn]

OAR,

TAT's proposal is for more than "basic".  He wanta people to be able to live happily without working if they choose.  Even Fabian socialism demands labor from the members of a collective.  If people may do nothing and live comfortably what does that say about the "labor theory of value"?  Are people not entitled to compensation for what they produce?

 

Ok, since you didn't to respond to the question- the answer is that no one is proposing collectivist agriculture in this thread.

Now- there are basics to the proposal of a universal guaranteed income and the principles behind it (as there are "basics" to any subject"). Whether you want to characterize the idea itself as "basic" is irrelevant, and falls under an entirely different meaning of the word.

We can allow that people are entitled to what they produce- we can even endorse the labor theory of value and say that the worth of their produce is dependent on the amount of labor required to produce it (a more or less defunct view, except among Marxists). This is fairly irrelevant.

It's irrelevant because we can lay on top of this the principle that everyone is equally entitled to land and natural resources, which no one created but we allow some to have legal ownership of- to the exclusion of everyone else, even though they have, in principle, the same right to it. So we can argue that everyone is equally entitled to the share of production that depends on land and natural resources, and not on labor. This is obviously a non-negligible portion, so it seems reasonable to allow everyone a subsistence income in exchange for, in effect, leasing the share of land and natural resources they're entitled to to the people with legal ownership of it. 

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

There are definitely two issues running parallel here, some of which are being conflated (mostly by Scott).

Issue 1 is - can this work as a matter of practical reality? 

Issue 2 is - can this system be morally justified? 

As an example of the conflation is here: 

 

Altherion,

But doesn't "stepped up basic" imply that those on it are entitled to everything others have earned despite contributing nothing material to a given society?  Doesn't that reduce the value of the labor others are exerting?

The first sentence is a moral question. The second sentence is really just a dressed up factual question about the Labor Theory of Value. But the structure of the argument suggests they are hitting the same point - they're not. Frankly, you don't need to buy into the Labor Theory of Value to buy into this idea. I think it's basically irrelevant (and wrong, anyway). 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

Fundamentally, doesn't that mean private property shouldn't exist and if humanity was two people one who works and one who does not the person who doesn't work should be equally entitled to the fruits produced by the labor of the one who does work?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

OAR,

Fundamentally, doesn't that mean private property shouldn't exist and if humanity was two people one who works and one who does not the person who doesn't work should be equally entitled to the fruits produced by the labor of the one who does work?

No. It means private property in land and resources exists as a legal fiction and no individual has an exclusive right to it in principle. It means if humanity was two people and one had some way of claiming all land and resources and preventing the other from cultivating it the other would deserve some share of what was produced off it, since they are equally entitled to it but prevented from utilizing it.

[The guy from the Vale]

Scot,

A basic income does not mean abolishment of possession. Nobody is proposing forcefully taking food from farmers; what is proposed is giving everybody enough money to afford food, shelter, and a few additional necessities. As soon as people want more than that, they still need to work.

Unless you think any redistribution of wealth to people who for whatever reason can't (find) work is inherently evil, I don't understand your objection. Particularly if this solution were to ultimately save bureaucratic costs.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I do see where y'all are coming from and I do have an issue with paying people for nothing who are capable of labor.  I think it shows a lack of respect for the labor of others.

[Joe Pesci]

You have no idea of my socioeconomic background. I do come from a working poor background on one side of my family and I have relationships with poor people and unemployed people. My family runs the whole spectrum of long term unemployed to living in a castle in the South of France. So don't presume to know people's experience.

I don't know who people are hanging around with but the vast majority of people I know do a lot of work for which they are not paid. The garden, they make things, they volunteer. A lot of the time they work harder at the things for which they don't get paid than the things for which they do get paid. If the assumption is that people are basically lazy and selfish at heart then such a system would collapse under the weight of too many people receiving an income and not enough people generation wealth. But if the assumption is that people are basically social and wish to be active and useful, then the system will work because few people will elect not to do income generating work for long periods of time. The experience people have of lazy, whining welfare sponges is symptomatic of a socioeconomic system which people find depressing and oppressive. In society which has a far more positive emotional influence on people the number of people who are genuinely indolent in nature will be so few that their total lifelong dependancy on a tax payer funded life will not be an economic drag on society. And in the end they are still part of the money-go-round.

I think human nature is is to be useful productive and to positively contribute to society. What we see currently is a distortion of that nature which makes people think human nature is the opposite of these things in most people apart from themselves.

These things are choices that people willingly make, no one is forcing them to do any of it. Sell your food you grow in your garden if you want paid, same for the things you make. Volunteering is to help others, not yourself, and quite frankly, a poor example. How a person spends their time outside of work is their choice, as is the amount of effort they put into it.

I'm not knowledgeable on any of these theories others are using in this conversation, but what happens when people who are teachers, firefighters, police officers, garbage pickup or paramedics start deciding that they no longer want to do their jobs and are willing to find something else lower paying since they will have this guaranteed income? Who is to say that they won't be willing to give up some non-necessities in their lives to avoid the rigors of their work? Who steps in to replace them?

[Lil Red Head]

I like the basic living wage idea. It would definitely help creative folks be able to do their work while maintaining basic things like rent and food. And since left brain skills are financially rewarded in this society, while right brain skills are not, it would help even the playing field.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

So, in theory, we would cut out all other forms of assistance, and provide a stipend for each citizen? Why aren't we doing this. 20,000 would be enough to survive, and any other income would be for the betterment of your family and life. I think its a great idea. What would anyone have to complain about it for, when everyone receives it regardless? The conundrum is as FNR said, how do you enforce a law against raising the prices on rent and such? If that was done, then nothing would be gained by this.

[aceluby]

So, in theory, we would cut out all other forms of assistance, and provide a stipend for each citizen? Why aren't we doing this. 20,000 would be enough to survive, and any other income would be for the betterment of your family and life. I think its a great idea. What would anyone have to complain about it for, when everyone receives it regardless? The conundrum is as FNR said, how do you enforce a law against raising the prices on rent and such? If that was done, then nothing would be gained by this.

Pretty sure we have ways of enforcing laws.  And the way this gets solved is by tying the minimum income to inflation.  No laws necessary.  But I think we're downplaying the effect of people having more ability to fill markets by having the flexibility to pursue what they want, so if there is a market (such as the renters market) where demand and profits are high, more people will have the ability to come into that market to fill that supply with lower prices, driving it down.

[S John]

I share Nestor and Ini's initial thoughts from the first page.  The trend of automating is only going to accelerate over time and not just in manufacturing, but into transportation and some white collar jobs as well.  I don't really look at this as a political issue (though it is) but an issue of practicality once we reach a certain point of technological advancement.

I think that the conventional wisdom has been that as technology replaces human jobs, we find something new and innovative that only humans can do and replace those obsolete jobs.  People begin to go into fields that were completely unforeseen in the recent past that have been created by the new technology.  

However, eventually (and we aren't quite there yet but maybe not too much longer), we are likely to get to a point where a large segment of the population simply does not need to work.  This should be a good thing.  Isn't that the ultimate goal of technological advancement?  To make the lives of humans better and easier?  People innovate because they can think of a way to improve the lives of humans, make things easier, more effective, or more streamlined.  That is why we have the car, the washing machine, the personal computer, on and on and on.  These things, at their core, are designed to make tasks require less work - that is why they are desirable and why people pay money for them.  

Not saying that we will reach a point where everyone can just sit around and stagnate, but I don't think that stagnation is in our nature.  People want to DO things.  Most people anyway.  But in the absence of a large-scale need for labor, people will be struggling trying to make ends meet rather than exploring interests that could lead to even more, better, unforeseen things.

Ultimately society (particularly in the US where poverty is often considered downright sinful) is going to have to have a major change in attitude when it comes to the distribution of resources.  Not out of a pie-in-the-sky hope for a utopian society, but because technology will necessitate this change as the only way to avoid living in a horrible society with massive unemployment and poverty rates.  Not because people are lazy and entitled, but because there are no paying jobs for a significant percentage of them to do.  We either say, fuck 'em, and allow for a massive underclass (and inevitable unrest), or we tweak the economic system to reflect the new reality.