[mgo]

You should research all tenets of basic income including the economic side of it by getting the opinion of actual economists on it before you make your decision. If you're not properly considering an idea then that leaves room for personal biases.

Government doesn't know how to run anything well, because the tenets of capitalism don't apply to government. The best managers of business are in the private sector where the real money is and where they have the most control.

The director of the FBI for example has a salary that tops out at about $200K plus benefits. No business manager who is truly great would want that job, so they don't. They incestuously promote from within most of the time and don't seek outsiders to fill top jobs. So nobody treats any government service as a business, and they get complacent and lose sight of the real goals, plus they don't tend to be able to budget. When was the last time you heard of a government department tightening it's belt on it's own? Private sector companies do it often to stay efficient.

Proper decision making starts with admitting that you can't possible know every angle to a particular issue. You can't be a great economist, a great businessman and a great government worker all-in-one. This is why business people surround themselves with people who DO know what they're doing (such as accountants, lawyers, engineers, marketers, etc).

How many hours have you spent researching basic income? Because extremely back-of-the-napkin math would tell you that a basic income of $20,000 is greater than the entire current government budget. Supporting a concept that would instantly consume over 100% of the current government budget is absolute madness.

Taxing rich people won't pay for this, even if you tax them at 90%. You have to squeeze the middle class and the lower class as well. Literally every level of the population suffers because working is no longer incentivised.

[TheOtherHobbes]

>Government doesn't know how to run anything well, because the tenets of capitalism don't apply to government.

Who built the freeway system, ran the Manhattan project, created CERN, put people on the moon, and sponsored the research that led to computing and the Internet?

>The best managers of business are in the private sector where the real money is and where they have the most control.

Given the number of incredibly destructive, if not downright stupid, CEOs in recent corporate history, that's simply not a reality-based argument.

>Literally every level of the population suffers because working is no longer incentivised.

Literally every level of the population is already suffering for much the same reason. Current forms of capitalism penalise long-term strategic investment in favour of asset sweating and smash-and-grab corporate raiding that provide short-term quick-fix profits but destroy long term growth potential.

Wall St will always prefer a quick buck now to a million dollar payout fifty years from now - and that's not a smart way to run a planetary economic strategy.

[pmoriarty]

"Who built the freeway system, ran the Manhattan project, created CERN, put people on the moon, and sponsored the research that led to computing and the Internet?"

There's also all of the taxpayer-funded and govt-run basic medical research that the pharmaceutical and medical industries get a free ride on.

[Intermernet]

I just finished reading the second (paper-back) edition of Michael Lewis's Flash Boys and he has added an "Afterword" to the book that discusses the diversionary and duplicitous tactics used by Wall Street (Both HFT lobbyists and others) to re-frame the arguments he originally made in light of public discussion prompted by the book.

I found that one chapter almost as disturbing as the rest of the book.

[wstrange]

You can add government health care to the list as well (at least for most of the west - excluding the USA).

Single payer provides better outcomes for the population at a lower cost per GDP.

[johnchristopher]

> You should research all tenets of basic income including the economic side of it by getting the opinion of actual economists on it before you make your decision. If you're not properly considering an idea then that leaves room for personal biases.

There is now on HN enough discussions of and references to basic income that it would take half a lifetime to ponder it all.

The only take away from this huge corpus of advices, opinions and reasoning is that economists - just like everyone else - heavily suffer from biases that trickle down to the laymen and that economic science is burdened with many theories that raise so many internal and external contradictions that the only way to see if any theory holds at least a grain of truth is to implement it and then spend the next half century explaining why it should have worked and why it didn't.

In my misinformed opinion it all boils down to two problems: greed and psychopaths are ruining it for everyone else on a massive scale.

[forthefuture]

I'd argue that greed is natural and that the economic system we've invented is more toxic. You can't fix greed, because greed is just a term "outsiders" use for people who act in their own self interest.

People should be greedy. There just needs to be a system in place that aligns the greed of individuals with utility for humanity. I can imagine such a system, so I'm pretty optimistic for the future.

[vibrio]

I agree that some level of 'greed' is good just like other animal-level motivations (anger, lust, etc). The problem is that unchecked they can be consuming make for poor decisions in the long view. Plus, they don't need to be legislatively encouraged, as they will always be present in humans in strong form.

[mingodad]

I used to believe on something like you describe but now I have a different view, I tried to find some videos that explain it, there is several but to start with look at this one http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/where-does-mo... .

Money is an illusion that can/is be created from nothing and one problem is for whom is it created in the first place ?

Governments do not need taxes to finance themselves they do/can create money from thin air.

Also: http://www.businessinsider.com/where-does-money-come-from-20...

Cheers !

[brbsix]

Fiat money can be created out of thin air. Value cannot. Printing money and introducing it into circulation just imposes a hidden tax on other people. It doesn't address the issue posed by the OP.

[mingodad]

Exactly and that's why we are paying this huge hidden tax for the top 1% to accumulate it.