[floppydisk]

We tried this idea, in America, at the Jamestown Colony. They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work and produce because there was no advantage to them working more than their peers. Why should I work to produce an excess when Billy Bob sits on the dock all day and receives the same share I do. When they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution, production at the colony skyrocketed because people were rewarded for their effort.

Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.

[TheOtherHobbes]

There was nothing "socialist" about Jamestown. Many of the initial settlers were aristocrats who had no experience of work, and no interest in it.

Unsurprisingly this didn't end well.

>If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work.

We already have a culture like this. Those who believe they own an entirely imaginary thing called "money" believe they're entitled to live off the efforts who don't.

It would take an outbreak of unreasonable optimism to claim this is the most efficient and productive of all possible systems - especially considering it's notorious for its many completely predictable failure modes.

[300bps]

Those who believe they own an entirely imaginary thing called "money"

The fact that someone can write this is laughable to anyone that was ever poor in their life.

Money is not at all imaginary. It's quite real. The lack of money can ruin your day, your year, your life.

As for what money is - it is a productivity storage mechanism. Once you've been productive it allows you to store that productivity in a fungible form. It allows you to exchange that stored productivity for the productivity of others, give it away to someone else or basically do anything you want with it.

[juliangregorian]

The fact that anyone was ever poor should be an affront to anyone who believes that money is real. People of your ilk are fond of resorting to the old canard "everyone needs a roof over their head and food in their belly". Well, there quite simply is an astounding surplus of such. Those who really believe that the lottery system we currently use of assigning who gets what is truly effective and just will have to answer for that someday.

Money is only powerful because a quorum of people have mutually agreed to believe that it is. One of the things I enjoy pointing out is that the stock market is a wonderful example of the power of belief. When enough people believe it's going to crash, guess what happens?

[Drakim]

What I feel many people miss is that goods and money are not synonyms. If there was a huge influx of money into the world, that helps exactly nobody because the amount of food, shelter and other goods has not increased.

I find that people "get" this a lot easier when you start talking about coupons and IOU instead of gold and dollars. Nobody believes that the guy who is moving coupons back and forth between various piles with specific timing has truly earned the load of goods he gains. Instead, they rightly feel like he is cheating the system and taking without giving back.

But in the real world, tons of people do tricks with money and get filthy rich from it, and that's just them "working smart". Meanwhile, somebody had to grow that potato, the actual tangible good, that he ate for dinner. What did he give back in return?

[jfuhrman]

> Nobody believes that the guy who is moving coupons back and forth between various piles with specific timing has truly earned the load of goods he gains. Instead, they rightly feel like he is cheating the system and taking without giving back.

If you're talking about grocery store coupons, then that guy has absolutely earned the gains. Coupons are a form of price discrimination, i.e sell at a higher margin to people with a lot of money and less time but not lose the guy who has less money but more time on his hands. The stores do not sell below cost except for a few loss leaders, so the potato grower is still making a sale that might not have happened without the guy going coupon hunting.

[juliangregorian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_%28bond%29

[juliangregorian]

Sure, and that reminds me of another great example for money's imaginary quality: The total amount of money in existence is many magnitudes more than it would theoretically take to end global poverty. However, no one dares attempt this, because it would knock the struts out that prop up the whole system (namely, debt).

[dragonwriter]

> The total amount of money in existence is many magnitudes more than it would theoretically take to end global poverty.

No quantity of money can end poverty, and no reasonable theory suggests that any amount of money can.

Systems of distributing goods and services (whether or not money is used as a proxy in those systems) might, but the quantity of money existing is pretty much irrelevant to that.

> However, no one dares attempt this, because it would knock the struts out that prop up the whole system (namely, debt).

Money is debt. Even commodity money -- as long as it is being traded not to be used for its intrinsic properties but for future exchange -- is essentially being used to separate the two sides of a barter transaction so that you don't need to exchange things of direct use such that the money then becomes, in effect, a marker of debt from the whole of the money-using society to the money holder.

So, yes, "debt" is the foundation on which the whole system of money is built because debt is what money is (modern fiat currency represents the abandonment of even the pretense that there is something else to it, as that pretense has always been costly to the function of money.) But if you think you can rearrange money to achieve some goal without maintaining its nature as debt, you don't understand money at all.

[floppydisk]

The grandparent noted that while we can increase the amount of currency in people's pockets, that doesn't fundamentally change the number of goods and services available to the total population. If you define poverty as lack of money, then yes, we can fiat more than enough money into existence. However, if you define poverty as lack of access to goods and services, increasing the amount of money available won't work. Look at Germany in the wake of World War I. Money was flowing everywhere, but the amount of good and services available was minuscule in comparison causing rampant inflation to the point where it was more cost effective to burn the paper currency for heat rather than spend it.

[jrs235]

This comment would be better if it wasn't inflammatory. Instead of

'People of your ilk are fond of resorting to the old canard "everyone needs a roof over their head and food in their belly"'

you could have written

'People are fond of resorting to the old canard "everyone needs a roof over their head and food in their belly"'

[icebraining]

The fact that anyone was ever poor should be an affront to anyone who believes that money is real.

Using "real" in this context is confusing; yes, money is a social construction - a real one. You can also have fictional social constructs (SF works often describe some).

Are you using "real" to mean "natural" (as in "natural rights")?

[kamaal]

Money is a medium to exchange effort/productivity and hence wealth. It is important because no one gives away their work for free. That is not because we are good/bad, that is because that is how we are by evolution. Our ancestors never climbed a tree unless there was a fruit to pluck or ran unless there was a deer to hunt. And given the effort involved in this, it made zero sense to share things for free.

We only have an organized form of that currently. Where you could do a lot of it and store it, and spend it later. Or opt to not earn it at all. Whatever the choice you must learn to live with it.

[thatcat]

>no one gives away their work for free >it made zero sense to share things for free >We only have an organized form of that currently

And yet much of the technology that power the internet that disseminates this idea you have run on GPL licensed software.

[juliangregorian]

Ludicrous. You can expend effort all your born days and not see a dime. People give things away all the time. And climb trees, even! Do you really live in a world so bereft of imagination?

[falcolas]

> Once you've been productive it allows you to store that productivity in a fungible form.

What is a trust fund then? Were the folks on the receiving end of trust funds productive? How about high frequency trading? Is the money made from computers intercepting and manipulating trade prices the result of someone's productivity?

Money has been divorced from productivity for quite some time.

[talmand]

Where did the funds in the trust come from? Was that being productive? Just because the person receiving the funds is not being productive doesn't mean the person who provided the funds in the first place wasn't productive.

As for high frequency trading, you may disagree with the means of production but that doesn't suddenly mean it isn't productive. Becoming efficient doesn't reduce productivity.

[ramblerman]

which hits the key point in Fuller's argument. In modern times thanks to scientific breakthroughs and the like, some people can be 100,000 times more productive than others with 1 invention.

Should they then possess 100,000 times the share?

[kamaal]

Yes, they should possess 100,000 the share or lets call that X for now.

They deserve X because of the productivity impact that cascades to the remainder of humanity.

[ramblerman]

What cascades exactly when we haven't quantified the invention.

ie. Curing cancer vs Curing Baldness vs Populating Mars

Surely they are not equal, but curing baldness may very well be the most profitable in this world.

[kamaal]

What's profitable is decided by what people want, and we are no one to impose our priorities onto the world.

Cancer isn't getting cured because it is not spreading virally. The day the threat level is same as Polio, Small Pox or such disease, the solution will be inevitable.

[floppydisk]

> There was nothing "socialist" about Jamestown. Many of the initial settlers were aristocrats who had no experience of work, and no interest in it.

The parent's quote specifically proposed the notion of people not working. This doesn't disprove the argument or address the point about the structure of Jamestown's initial income distribution mechanism.

> We already have a culture like this. Those who believe they own an entirely imaginary thing called "money" believe they're entitled to live off the efforts who don't.

How are you defining work? Money is a proxy for value produced at some point in time and you can either save it or immediately spend it. If someone acquired a reserve of value, how are they living off the efforts of other people? They still must buy goods and services like everyone else.

[Delmania]

The claim that Jamestown was "saved by capitalism" is the typical libertarian/conservative story touted out in discussions about socialism and capitalism.

The situation was a lot more nuanced than that. The setup of Jamestown as between the Crown and the investors, not the colonists, who were essentially indentured servants for 7 years. Also, the climate was not right for the types of crops the colonists were trying to grow, and as someone else mentioned, the settlers were not accustomed to the environment.

"How are you defining work? Money is a proxy for value produced at some point in time and you can either save it or immediately spend it. If someone acquired a reserve of value, how are they living off the efforts of other people? They still must buy goods and services like everyone else."

That's an incredibly naive response. I would venture the author of that comment is referring to CEO and bankers on Wall Street. For the amount these people are paid, it's hard to see how much value they are producing. There is definitely an entitlement mindset.

[floppydisk]

That's an incredibly frustrating response because it doesn't actually address anything substantive but simply attempts to cast dispersion on the arguments. I'll reiterate the request I made to a commentator below in the thread. Are there counter examples of a society working without incentive that allows people to work or not work and if so, why aren't they with us today / if they are, why aren't they more influential? I'm open to being proven incorrect in the course of a substantive discussion, however, I'm disinclined to change my views in the face of simple dispersion.

You're missing the point that incentives matter, pretty much every economist from the most socialist to the most libertarian agrees on that point. When you incentivize one activity, you're removing incentives somewhere else. I.E. if I cut the cost of junk food 1000% percent, I'm encouraging you to eat bad food because you can get more of it for less compared to healthy food. Comparably, if I incentivize not working that will reduce or remove the incentives to work.

> That's an incredibly naive response.

And that's a terrible response with no further substantiation of the position. What is the "not naive" view of money? Why is it a superior position to hold? Give me a reason to prefer. Simply telling me I'm being naive without substantiation or alternative is borderline ad hominem.

> For the amount these people are paid, it's hard to see how much value they are producing. There is definitely an entitlement mindset.

How are you defining value? In the case of your example, they're leading in and participating in multi-billion dollar companies and markets that people are giving money to in exchange for services indicating they provide some value to the end user. We can debate the merits of that value or the manner it's provided, but the fact that people are giving the companies money would indicate they're providing a good or service the people value.

[jrs235]

First off, I mostly agree with your sentiments. This comment is not in opposition but made to extend the discussion even beyond just money.

In order for a universal basic income system to work, we'll probably need to ditch democracy or put into writing some difficult to change protections. Seeing that the Constitution is being treated as either a) a living breathing document whose meaning changes with time or b) just a piece of inconvenient paper, I don't see a feasible way of making a universal basic income system work (edit: along side a democracy).

What's basic and what are people minimally entitled to? I believe everyone should be provided a place to sleep. But I think that should consist of a cot in a cement dorm like room with shared bathrooms. Other's will want, or with time demand or think that they should be provided a house, with cable TV, a cell phone, etc... With democracy in place it only will take until 51% of people don't want to work until the system completely breaks and falls into havoc (at which point a tyrannic dictator often takes over).

"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%."

which will lead to:

"Democracy with a universal basic income will lead to 51% of the people voting to take away the wealth and productivity of the other 49%."

[icebraining]

Why doesn't that happen now, then? The current majority could, right now, decide to massively increase the taxes on, say, the 40% richest and redistribute that money to the rest of the 60%.

In fact, the current majority can, right now, decide to implement UBI, and then do all those things you describe.

Essentially, it's a slippery slope argument, with no great explanation of why UBI would change the conditions to start the "slip" that hasn't occurred until now.

[Delmania]

Fair enough, my aim was to remove Jamestown from the equation, as that was not some failed experiment in socialism, but a poorly planned colony.

In terms of what you're looking for, there is not pure society like that. The closest you'll get are nations that highly socialist. Here's a Quora question on the topic: http://www.quora.com/Which-are-the-rich-socialist-countries-....

Fully removing incentives doesn't work, but I would claim you do need to make sure people avoid the poverty trap (and that's only part of it).

To respond to your other question, the classic example would be mortgage backed securities that were part of the housing crisis. They provided -some- value, but overall, they were nothing more than scheme to make money off people's payments and nonpayments of mortgages.

Also, CEO's, on average, make 300% of the average worker's salary. I'm not sure the average CEO is 300% more productive than an field worker or an engineer. They do have a hand in leading the organization, but honestly, most of that work is done by the people below them in the org chart.

[philh]

> The situation was a lot more nuanced than that. The setup of Jamestown as between the Crown and the investors, not the colonists, who were essentially indentured servants for 7 years. Also, the climate was not right for the types of crops the colonists were trying to grow, and as someone else mentioned, the settlers were not accustomed to the environment.

I don't know anything about Jamestown, but... this kind of feels like you're giving more detail, but it's detail that doesn't really contradict the original narrative?

At any rate, I took the original narrative to be: originally the workers received the same amount of stuff regardless of how much they worked, and that went badly. Then the workers started to receive more for working harder, that went better. And your version seems to be consistent with that, even if there were other factors making things difficult for the colony. Like they're two different stories, set in the same universe but focused on different things. One is a history and one is a snapshot, and the snapshot adds more detail but doesn't mean the history is wrong.

That's the impression I'm getting of the two narratives here. I remain ignorant of the actual facts.

[Delmania]

Here a more detailed picture: http://www.ushistory.org/us/2c.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Virginia#Starving_Ti...

While I personally cannot attest to the validity of these sources, it paints a more realistic picture of what happened. The colony's failure was not due to socialism, but to poor planning and expectations.

[philh]

What I notice about those sources is that the original story in this thread

> They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. ... [Later] they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution

seems to not be retold in them. (I only skimmed, so perhaps I missed something?)

So, I guess: if that story is true, then those sources still don't contradict it. They add relevant detail, but if the story did happen as told, then it's still evidence that the "socialist" model worked less well than the "capitalist" model. It's somewhat surprising that those sources don't mention the two models tried. (In this case, I expect the "capitalist" model corresponds to 1619 onwards, "individual land ownership was also instituted". The first source doesn't cover this time period at all.)

And if that story is false, then the correct reply seems to be "um, that's not what happened" rather than "here's more detail".

[juliangregorian]

It's well known that, once you acquire enough money, you can live off the proceeds of that money. If you inherited a million dollars and put it in bog-standard funds, you'd get ~$75,000 a year for doing absolutely nothing. How that factors into your theory, I'd love to know.

[philh]

In (at least) two ways. One, you'd be lending wealth to other people so that they can create more wealth. Without your investment, less wealth would be created. Two, your parents acquired money by producing wealth, and one of the things that they chose to spend that money on was their progeny.

(NB. This does not claim that the allocation of money for value produced is perfectly fair, or just, or economically optimal, or whatever.)

[AndrewKemendo]

Not the OP but your assumption is that 1. That "investment" mechanism will hold up forever and 2. That you don't put that money in the system at the wrong time assuming it is a random walk.

[juliangregorian]

Well, that's pretty much how ETFs work. I don't quite understand what you mean about a random walk, though.

[AndrewKemendo]

You're missing the point. Any investment, ETFs or otherwise, work, when the market is going up or sideways.

It falls apart if you needed money in - oh say 2008 or 2009. Or at any of the other points in time when things were shit.

It also falls apart 200 years from now - so it's not like it's a law that this is a system that will remain in place.

[Shivetya]

Has socialism worked anywhere? I think it would take a rewriting of people's expectations to have any chances. When you have many in society having the belief they are entitled to nearly anything, when they are told so over and over its their right, how can they ever function in a truly socialist system

The reason such a system fails is that you cannot exclude those who won't participate but instead just want to take

[IkmoIkmo]

Virtually all advanced economies rely on socialist principles of redistribution of wealth through the fiscal system and state programmes within the context of a market economy.

Beyond that we're now seeing a growing dialogue pushing towards basic income, a full minimum living that is guaranteed and unconditional. This too can be considered socialist, and this too is compatible with a market economy where above and beyond the basic income (of e.g. $20k per year per person or whatever it is), people can pursue jobs to make $60k or $200k just like they do today, pursue education, charity or the thing they like to do, just as they do today, without the incentives of crime and fraud that exists for millions of Americans today who can't afford rent or insurance.

Neither systems are without flaws or caveats, but they show that socialist principles have their place in society. Of course that's different from other socialist principles which have failed, and a country without any form of market economy at all on a substantial scale (e.g. 10-20 million people and beyond) succeeding is unknown to me. Doesn't mean some of the principles of socialism aren't valuable. It'd be like saying a diet of just bread and water sucks, and extrapolating from that that any other diet that includes the components of bread and water(e.g. bread, water, veggies, fruit, fish), must therefore suck, too.

[Anderkent]

>why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?

There's a lot of room for manouver between 'everyone gets exactly the same amount no matter their contribution' and 'everyone must be productive (net-positive on the society) to sustain themselves'.

So, reasons you might contribute when even the sky-gazers can survive at a decent level:

1. Because the extra pay lets you do more fun things

2. Because you enjoy the work

3. Because the extra status you get from your work contributions is rewarding

4. Because you like the people you work with

5. Because you're one of the one in ten thousand people who can leverage the technological progress to make significant contributions, and feel something of a noblesse oblige

6. Because you don't even consider what you're doing work (you were just playing around with maths and theory, and suddenly new discoveries!)

[floppydisk]

It's an interesting angle, and the possibility exists you might be right, however, for the sake of discussion I'm going to push back a bit.

A thriving economy necessitates people produce more than what they need to live. This excess gets exchanged with peers in the economy and most everyone benefits. Rather than straight barter, we use currency as a mediator to allow people who couldn't barter directly to still exchange goods and services. Consider the case of the USSR. During one of their many social programs, they turned all the farmland in the USSR into communal farms and struggled. Eventually, they relaxed restrictions and allowed people to start farming private plots of land where they could keep everything they grew in addition to the communal farms and things went comparatively gang busters. People had more food and suddenly they had more food to exchange on the market than the communal farms produced.

We are inherently social creatures and if people are surrounded by people who don't work, it creates a social climate that praises non-work over work. I.E. the "extra status" from your contributions is a social construct. Status is a social construct and in this case assumes people value workers and will heap status upon them for their contributions. Take an elite athlete who won a championship and drop him in the middle of grandma's sewing club, he'll have 0 status compared to that group's rock star. Status will only be conferred by people who value it and that might not be the case for people who aren't working.

> 6. Because you don't even consider what you're doing work (you were just playing around with maths and theory, and suddenly new discoveries!)

There's a difference between "new discovery" and "valuable new discovery" and turning that into something useful and productive.

[PakG1]

As I understand it, various nordic countries are quite nice in that people are well-compensated for what those in North America would consider low-paying jobs. This would give people a lot more freedom to do what they like or do what they're able to do (if they have limited skill learning potential) without worrying about their future.

[easyaspie]

i like reason number 2 maybe 'cause literally our life is so boring hehehe

sorry for bad english

[douche]

I support the idea of a basic income, but only if it is a replacement for the system of piecemeal welfare programs and tax-breaks that we currently have. The entire system could get so much simpler than it currently is.

You get your basic income check for X dollars a month. If you work a job, run a business, whatever, in addition to that, you get taxed Y% on your earnings, excluding the basic income amount. No deductions, no write-offs, no tax-shelters. If you wanted to have a progressive sliding scale tax rate, fine, although that makes it more complicated than a flat tax.

HR Block and Intuit would scream, but if you could do your taxes with just your W-2 and a four-function calculator, how many billions of dollars could we avoid wasting and invest in a more productive sector of the economy?

[Lawtonfogle]

You are going to have issue with telling the basic incomers in more expensive places (like cities) that they have to move or else you are going to have to adjust basic income by cost of living.

The former is politically very dangerous (more so than BI already is) while the later is going to quickly add complication to the issue that you are trying to simplify.

[lsaferite]

I'd suggest replacing an income tax with a sales tax though. One 'punishes' earning, the other 'punishes' spending. Additionally you simplify enforcement by narrowing the collection points considerably. Talk about simple, you don't ever files taxes as an individual.

That mixed with basic income is a good plan from my non-economist POV.

I've sure someone far smarter that I can explain why I'm amazingly naïve.

[tangent128]

From what I've read on the subject:

Economically, you want to keep money flowing through the system as fast as possible. One dollar spent three times in a year contributes more to the economy than two dollars spent once. (I could imagine it even contributing more three dollars spent once due to participating in more transactions, but I don't know how you'd model that.)

If you tax spending, you incentivize hoarding cash, which decreases the "monetary velocity".

The psychology is different when income is taxed. People can choose to defer spending, but the only way to reduce income tax is to make less money- sure, some oddballs may do so out of spite, but most people prefer to maximize their income.

Furthermore, when combined with basic income, income tax does a better job of reducing the magnitude of inequality. While on its own that's a social argument, it becomes an economic argument very quickly: since it "takes money to make money", extreme inequality levels actually disincentivize productivity from the have-nots, since the expected return on effort becomes negligible.

[lsaferite]

Is not spending money such a bad thing?

If your entire economy is propped up by increasing levels of spending, isn't that a serious problem that could explode?

Even if you tax sales and incentivize saving, people will still spend money. They obviously need to purchase basic goods, and people will still want luxuries.

So, will people save more? Probably. Will they stop spending and throw the economy into a downward death spiral? Highly doubtful.

As a followup, it has the added benefit of still getting tax money from the black market. If you are a drug dealer, you don't pay income tax, right? But you still buy goods and probably quite a few luxury goods. It also would capture tax money from the very wealthy if you drop all tax exemptions so they couldn't pay someone to find a loophole. It's not like they sit on their large sums of money and never purchase things.

[tangent128]

If an economy is propped up by personal debt, things can (and have) exploded, yes.

But when not fueled by personal debt, you generally want faster spending, so that potential productive capacity gets used instead of left sitting for lack of demand.

Taxes: You definitely want to reduce loopholes as much as possible, and a sufficiently generous basic income would reduce the need for a lot of tax breaks, yes.

It is observed, however, that the very wealthy spend proportionally less on goods and services; most of their income gets reinvested. Good for them, but it leads to a positive feedback loop.

[humanrebar]

> I've sure someone far smarter that I can explain why I'm amazingly naïve.

I actually like your plan a lot, but it's worth knowing the weak points of any plan.

> Additionally you simplify enforcement by narrowing the collection points considerably.

That's one weak point. As long as there's big money involved, there will be incentives to minimize, cajole, hide, smuggle, etc. For example, the tax burden for cigarettes is already rather high, so there's a market for legal (Native American smoke shops), quasi-legal (online ordering), and illegal (selling loose cigarettes on the street) cigarette sales to get the "tax free" discount.

Extrapolate that to taxes on all goods and you see burgeoning black and grey markets and the organized crime that goes along with them.

...and there will be incentives for fraud with the basic income reporting as well.

There may be less regulation and enforcement overall, but it won't disappear by any means, especially given enough time for fraudsters to become more sophisticated.

[lsaferite]

As I said in another reply, there is already tax-evasion at the business level. Only having to enforce tax collection at the business level allows more focus on ensuring compliance. I would think the penalties would be much higher as well.

As far as basic income fraud, I think it should a basic income for EVERYONE, no matter the income level. If you are a real person with identity documents and of a certain age, you get a check. Will people try to defraud that, of course. They already defraud all the existing government programs. But as with dropping income tax, with basic income you drop all other government merit based assistance programs and focus only on a basic income program. Your fraud detection is now focused on a single program.

I even like the FairTax idea of an across the board tax 'prebate' for poverty level spending. Then every eligible citizen gets a basic income AND doesn't pay taxes on spending below the poverty line.

The question would be, would the taxes collected on above-poverty spending fully fund the program AND federal/state/local government spending? That's where I'm totally clueless. I tend to think that it would work out if it was a complete changeover. All government assistance programs would need to be merged into a single program and the federal/state tax systems would need to be scrapped en masse and replaced with a flat federal sales tax.

Will it ever happen? Hell no. Even if it is economically viable, there are way too many special interests that would lobby against anything like it happening.

[meztez]

Undeclared sales

[lsaferite]

That's already an issue though. With just a sales tax then you cut individual tax evasion out of the mix and allow the tax authorities to focus on tax evasion at the business level. Ignoring any arguments about the tax revenue difference between income + sales vs. sales only, I would think you could ensure much higher compliance if you only had to enforce at the business level with the added benefit of less bureaucracy.

[Anderkent]

Of course some people need more than just basic income to survive - if your medical expenses are 10x basic income, and you cut out all other welfare, how are those people meant to compensate?

There are some kinds of welfare that you can replace with basic income, but not all of them.

[douche]

I should have distinguished, but I wasn't including healthcare. More along the lines of TANF, food stamps, fuel assistance, unemployment, all the other drips and drabs of money that can be applied for if you know about it and can work the bureaucracy.

US healthcare is fucked nine ways from sunday; maybe someday we'll adopt something on the Canadian pattern (I've had emergency surgery done in Quebec on vacation, anesthesia, overnight stay, 70-mile ambulance ride, the works - and the total was 1/10th of what it would cost in the US.)

Social Security is another sacred cow that you probably couldn't touch, at least until it goes tits up because all the boomers start drawing and there aren't enough of us left to pay in.

[Lawtonfogle]

It is better to offer free health care that is paid via taxes/lower BI because it is cheaper to a society at large if people get regular checkups and fix problems earlier instead of waiting until the problem can no longer be ignored.

[jeza]

I gather you could still have something like Medicare (Australia) with a basic income. It's administrated entirely separately from welfare.

[cryoshon]

Irrelevant example. Jamestown is ancient history, per-industrialization and also by definition of the former, pre-post-industrialisation. Jamestown knew nothing of assembly lines, tractors, robotic fabrication, office jobs, and knowledge work. They never managed to actualize their population's hierarchy of needs enough to reach those levels.

We're far, far beyond needing to strike the earth to get fed each day. The real "producers" are mostly machines which extract value from the earth and process it for end-use. As far as the people who own the machines, they are a mere fraction of the human race... seems a bit silly to accommodate them excessively at the expense of everyone else's well being.

[roflc0ptic]

"The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work"

To be clear, the people in the colony barely survived because people lacked the sense of self preservation required to work. You're positing that this occurred because they had to share their output; the tellings I've heard were that the aristocrats wouldn't work until another governer (John Smith) came in and made them work on fear of death.

The idea that anything about this situation was socialist is not well founded. The idea that the terrible outcome is proof positive of anything in particular is not well substantiated. I prefer it as a story of exactly how far the entitlement of the rich goes: those used to controlling the means of production would rather die than give up their positions of privilege. But it's not proof of my ideological position, and it's not proof of yours. It's just anecdata. The rest is just conjecture, not backed up empirically.

[IkmoIkmo]

It's funny the people championing 'incentives for work', thereby turning 'redistribution of wealth' into some kind of mortal sin, simultaneously brand inheritance (redistribution of wealth by bloodright/nepotism) as a 'death tax' and act as if it's the worst thing ever.

I'd be a lot more inclined to be a bigger proponent for incentive based economies if we all started on a level playing field with equal opportunity. The reality is far from it, and we get phenomena like the working poor, millions of people with jobs, sometimes multiple, who can barely scrape by, in the same economy where others are born literally a millionaire without any basis in merit.

Obviously there has to be a balance in incentives, but I'm inclined to say the US has lost some sense of that balance.

[floppydisk]

> It's funny the people championing 'incentives for work', thereby turning 'redistribution of wealth' into some kind of mortal sin, simultaneously brand inheritance (redistribution of wealth by bloodright/nepotism) as a 'death tax' and act as if it's the worst thing ever.

I think you're conflating two ideas. Redistribution of wealth, in my understanding, means taking from Peter to pay Paul regardless of what Paul did. Inheritance on the other hand is Peter accumulated value (money) but decided to save it or invest it rather than outright spend it and gifted it forward.

The difference between the two is the level of coercion. In the former, the government is deciding who gets what from whom and how much in a roundabout way. In the latter, the individual who accumulated the value is deciding whom gets what and how much.

> in the same economy where others are born literally a millionaire without any basis in merit.

If the millionaires wish to remain millionaires, the money cannot be idle. It has to be invested in value producing activities that generate a return. If they just spend it, they won't be millionaires for long (see NFL stars going broke right after they get out of the league for an example).

[IkmoIkmo]

> The difference between the two is the level of coercion.

I'm not debating the role of the state here, I'm showing that two people are born, one with $10m and one with $0, and that it's ridiculous to argue from such a state of reality that one ought to have a fully incentive based economy when one never has to work a day in their life (except walk to a bank, say '30% in the S&P 500 please, 30% in gold please, 30% in US treasuries please and 10% in a money market account please', and collect his check for the rest of his life), and the other can work 2 jobs like many millions of Americans do and barely scrape by. You'd agree that this is a flawed system, no?

That's a flawed system, and the solution is simple, the government employs coercion. I can't be against that as long as the coercion is on moral grounds, just like coercion is employed in many other situations (e.g. taxation, or prohibition of buying a slave for 10 years even if that person is willing) You mention coercion as if it's inherently a bad thing. Inheritance tax can level the playing field a little bit, where say instead of one kid, through no merit of his own, inherits $10m by bloodright and the other $0, one can inherit $1m (a gigantic advantage) and 9.000 others inherit $10k (a small advantage). That's redistribution of wealth and it's as much 'coercion' as a regular tax rate.

It's not a perfect solution (without flaws) or a complete solution (one that solves every problem), but inheritance tax makes a lot of sense and I reiterate, it's funny people being so hypocritical about it.

[epsylon]

> If the millionaires wish to remain millionaires, the money cannot be idle. It has to be invested in value producing activities that generate a return.

So what? Investing is not giving. Investing may generate wealth, but if there's no redistribution, the rich will get richer and the poor will stay poor.

[mcphage]

"We tried it once 400 years ago, and it didn't work then, so clearly it won't ever work."

[tormeh]

I think there's a middle ground to be found here. What if everyone gets the necessities and some basic niceties, and the most productive get the rest? You'd be working for luxury and status, as opposed to necessity, but isn't that motivation enough?

[floppydisk]

What qualifies as the necessities and basic niceties? That's a very broad category that fluctuates based on where you live. Necessities + basic niceties in my current area cost a significant multiple of somewhere else like the Midwest USA. In turn, this might incentivize people to move from Midwest USA to other area USA if they're getting more $$$ and thereby raise the total cost of the program.

[icebraining]

What qualifies as the necessities and basic niceties? That's a very broad category that fluctuates based on where you live.

It doesn't really matter, because people can move. You just give the same to everyone, and let people choose whether they prefer to live large in Midwest or frugally/working in NY.

[spydum]

some sort of consumerism-socialist arrangement? i suspect youd end up with lot of folks who realize they can sit back and do nothing and sustain themselves. the labor pool of low-income jobs dries up, employers have to raise wages to attract workers, and the price of goods and services goes up. I'm sure there is some balancing point, but we dont know where that is (maybe thats the fear)

[quesera]

Bucky Fuller always inspires disagreement, but I think you'd have a difficult time making the case that the Jamestown Colony from the year 1607 is in any way relevant to this discussion.

[dbingham]

Comparing Jamestown to today is nonsense. Technology has advanced so much further it's not even funny. We are now capable of nearly completely automating factories. Sure there still have to be people to do that automation and to maintain the machines, but it doesn't take very many people to do that.

With industrial agriculture, 2% of our population is producing the vast majority of our food. With experimental ecology based agricultures, we could see a form of agriculture that takes even less work (it's based on perennials, so you don't have to plant every year) to produce just as much or more. If we can sort out automated recycling we will reach a place where we no longer need to mine. Mass transit on rails just begs for automation and provides people an easy way to get around.

We are shockingly close to a post-scarcity society. Not quite true post-scarcity, where no one needs to work and automation produces all we need, but a society where we very small handful of people can produce enough for the rest of the world.

We'll still need a system that rewards those people, yes, by why punish everyone else? Why force everyone else in working increasingly pointless jobs just because we need to reward the few people actually working necessary jobs? And interestingly enough, we aren't currently rewarding the people working the necessary jobs. If the economy rewarded people according to the importance of their work, farmers would be paid like financial executives.

The other part of this coin is that, while there are absolutely lazy people in the world, there are just as many people who will naturally gravitate towards doing some sort of "work". I would argue that most people would get bored and dissatisfied just sitting on the couch watching television all day. Instead they'll spend their time pursuing their passions. For a lot of people this would probably be "useless" art -- music, theater, fiction, etc. But, hey, if we already have enough people doing the useful things, then why not?

But for others it will be things like science, engineering, invention, and so on. The first several generations of scientists were men and women of leisure. They were wealthy aristocrats who didn't have to work if they didn't want to. But they did work. They choose to work. They choose to do often incredibly monotonous data collection because they were fascinated by the natural world.

There's no reason we couldn't have a world where the vast majority of us are free to pursue whatever we wish. And I'm willing to bet that, in that world, we'd see an explosion of innovation and discovery.

[digikata]

One could argue that the current economic system has shifted to increasingly taking labor from the vast majority of producers while providing a minimal amount of compensation, all while a tiny slice get a vast amount of compensation.

Because most producers simply don't get enough of a margin above subsistence, a wide range of society dosen't have the resources to make investments in new businesses (or new personal investments) and our economic potential suffers. If too much of the economic excess is concentrated into too few hands we end up with an inefficient command economy.

What the BBC article describes to us should strongly hint to us that the current work arrangement is a local maxima in the efficiency of our social/economic system, and that other arrangements should be looked at to yield better social and economic benefits. And honestly, I think that labels such as "Socialism" and "Capitalism" have done a lot of damage in the short-circuiting of analysis of economic systems (ie. in the vein of "This is socialism" we we know that doensn't work...). We really have to move beyond classifying into those broad categories and deciding policy based upon what broad camp one believes in.

[jacalata]

Most people argue that technological advances made since Jamestown mean that we literally absolutely don't need everyone to work, because we are no longer an impoverished subsistence society.

[floppydisk]

I concur, we've made significant technological strides since then and it's nice that we've pushed our standard of living from swampy subsistence to one of the best in the world. However, that doesn't address the thrust of the argument which is if you create a society that rewards sky-gazing it creates the probability of a disincentive to work. Are there counter examples where this kind of society as worked in the past, and if so, why aren't they with us/significantly more influential today?

[jacalata]

I don't think you understood me. Let's say 80% of people won't work if they don't have to (I think thats not true, but to pick a number). Until today, that meant that allowing people not to work meant that society would collapse and everyone would starve because it wasn't possible to produce food and shelter for so many without their help. Today, it is possible due to technological advances that did not ever before exist. Thats why there is no example of it working before but people believe it could work today.

[LLWM]

Well, yes. Most people who suggest such things aren't considering what it would take to get humans to work because they assume all the work will be done by robotic slaves.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work

This is a narrative, not a plain fact.

Many people continue to do work without incentive. They feel demotivated, they don't need the money and can go live in mom's basement. They do it out of boredom, even habit or inertia.

Also, it can be difficult to determine people's incentives, they're not always aware of those themselves, so short of telepathy you can't always claim to know whether one is there or not.

[Lawtonfogle]

What about a little of column A and a little of column B?

Work gets rewarded, but you have enough to survive (but not thrive) even if you choose to do nothing?