If you give everyone an UBI of $X and then tax everyone ($X/mean income)% of their income, it is mathematically guaranteed to be revenue-neutral (and have no effect on the money supply, so no devaluation or inflation). Everyone below the mean income ends up getting more than they pay, and only those above it end up paying more than they get. Because the mean income is around the 75th percentile, this ends up giving a supermajority of people more than it will cost them, while remaining revenue neutral. Even most of those above the mean income don’t make much above the mean income, so the cost to them would be minimal. This is because so much income goes to a tiny fraction of the population, who would bear the brunt of the burden.
This works for any X less than the mean income. The median income is around half the mean, so we could easily guarantee that nobody ever gets less than what currently half of people make less than, and not only that bottom half but the next quarter would still come out ahead. All without printing a single new dollar.
Reply to tim wood I am generally in favor of a UBI plan, but I do not think it is a sufficient solution to the distribution of wealth we produce.
Even if a UBI plan were instituted, higher taxation and all, some critical problems remain which would not be addressed.
1. Now more than ever, we need to make a very rapid transition from fossil fuel energy to solar / wind / hydro / nuclear. This involves a radical reorganization of the economy. If you think COVID-19 was disruptive, the very rapid (or even rapid) transition from fossil to renewable energy will be much more disruptive. Much of the world's wealth production is founded on fossil fuels, and it will take perhaps 30 to 50 years to complete the transition. Will we have enough national income to afford a UBI, or much else?
2. Current MANDATORY spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and DISCRETIONARY spending (Defense, Health, Education, Housing, etc.) required 4.4 trillion dollars in 2019, which amounts to 21% of GDP. Taxation produced $3.5 trillion dollars, 16.3% of GDP. [Congressional Budget Office figures].
So, deficit spending.
Reorganizing spending will be a very painful process. Retirement planning has relied on social security for... about 85 years. Medicare has been in place 55 years. That's just two examples of deeply integrated programs. Many other programs are equally integrated in our social expectations. Unwinding trillion dollar programs won't be a simple process.
Like I said, I'm generally in favor of UBI, but implementation has to account for other complicated programs.
The UBI is coming...and there will come a day when people will wonder why it took so long to get here.
My guess is the UBI will get here within the lifetime of people now alive...perhaps even during the lifetime of people who are now adults.
I'm 83...I won't see it. But I have been an advocate for the UBI for over three decades now.
It will come...and future people will look at us who now lack it...the way we look at people who thought it okay for grammar school kids to work 6 1/2 days a week digging coal in coal mines.
The idea is to give every adult in the US $1000/month. The numbers: 330M people, roughly three quarters of which are adults, times $12,000 equals about $3T dollars. Per year. But how to keep from ruining the dollar?
Likely it wouldn't ruin the dollar. A lot of that would be raise the aggregate demand, so what's the problem?
What basically universal income does is that the threshold to take a job increases. This is obvious even more clear with unemployment benefits. In a welfare state like mine one if paid unemployment benefits to perpetuity (as long as one lives) with the social welfare net paying your rent for a small apartment in the capital or a larger house in the countryside. What really can happen is that it alienates some people not to work, but at least they won't be beggars on the streets and homeless (which is a huge advantage, actually). The logic is quite reasonable: if you go to work at McDonalds, basically you are going to be left with a similar amount of money, but you have far less spare time to uhh.... discuss universal basic income in PF.
Reply to ssu Did Finland install its generous social safety early on? My guess is that it did. The US did not. Social Security was not a universal program to start out. Farm labor, maids and servants was left out in order to deny SS to blacks (per the southern block of senators). There were no medical benefits (for 30 years, not until the mid '60s). Unemployment has always been as niggardly and as hard to get as a state wanted to make it. Disability insurance has in various times and places been difficult to qualify for.
The American social safety net was hard won and not overly generous, but it has nonetheless long since been integrated in people's long-range plans.
I'm 83...I won't see it. But I have been an advocate for the UBI for over three decades now.
73, here. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, either. I've been on UBI's bandwagon, more or less, for 30 years too, though from the perspective of socialism. It seems to me the "installed base" of safety net programs, tattered and full of holes as they are, will make a UBI difficult to achieve here (if for no other reason that the installed base will serve as an excuse for not doing).
It seems to me the "installed base" of safety net programs, tattered and full of holes as they are, will make a UBI difficult to achieve here (if for no other reason that the installed base will serve as an excuse for not doing).
That reason aside, I think UBI and the existing tattered net can be integrated together rather easily. Just make UBI-payments-minus-UBI-tax count as income for the purposes of determining income for those other programs. Gradually increase the UBI until those other programs wither away as nobody needs them anymore. Or if people who do need them start falling off of them too soon, adjust their income requirements appropriately to keep those people still on them, until UBI is raised enough that people who fall off of them due to UBI can afford to be off of them.
FWIW, I also think that UBI can be sold to even conservative people in a way that I was pleasantly surprised to see the recent $1200 CARES stimulus payments done: it's a refundable tax credit.
Tell everyone they'll get 25% of the mean income as a refundable tax credit, to offset a 25% tax on their income to fund an UBI. Make tax refunds paid out in monthly installments, and there you go: that tax credit is the UBI, of around $1000-something a month. Everyone below about the 75th percentile sees their taxes go down, and most of them get a monthly tax refund check, with absolutely destitute people getting such a check of over $1000/mo.
Or you could make it $2000, or $3000, or even about $4000, and the numbers still all work out the same. You just have to make the tax percentages 50%, 75%, or almost 100% to accomplish those numbers, which start to look less feasible. (I personally would aim for about a 50% target, but it's really negotiable).
Reply to tim wood Personally I am opposed to an asset tax strictly speaking, but I am very very strongly in favor of a usury tax. Any money made off of simply owning something and lending it out -- whether that something be cash or land or whatever, so basically any income from interest and rents -- should be taxed at exorbitant rates, up to 100% is fine with me. That will make owning things unprofitable, incentivizing those who make money off of owning things to lend out take their next-best option, selling them off... except nobody else will be buying them for investments anymore, so the only way to tell them off is to sell them on terms that people who need them for their own use can afford. So the rich get two choices: hang on to your usury-generating assets and get all your profits taxed away, or find some way to get those assets into the hands -- into the ownership -- of people who need them for their own use, and escape the tax man. Also, incidentally, millions of poor people enter the ownership class along the way.
Edit: without affecting people who own things for their own use, e.g. my ex-girlfriend's multi-generational family home in Santa Barbara that is now worth millions of dollars shouldn't be taxed out from under them, because other than owning that home they're not rich. I am very much in favor of people being secure in their ownership of things they actually use, and not having to keep paying the government for the continued right to keep them.
Reply to tim wood I have no objection to actual equity investment: you spend money on some endeavor in hopes of making more money out of it. All I object to is charging people for the use of something that you then are owed back in full, in addition to the money you charged. If you’re not going to be using it yourself some way and profiting off it from that, your only option to profit should be to sell it off.
Reply to tim wood I came up with my own objection to rent and interest before ever hearing about the Old Testament version of it (or the contemporary Islamic equivalent thereof). Or of David Ricardo's critique of rent, which was apparently highly influential on Marx in turn.
The religious bans on interest don't also ban rent, BTW, and both medieval Christians and modern Muslims get around it by a weird combination package of "interest-free" loans, insurance, and rent. The ancients seem not to have realized that interest is just a special case of rent, namely rent on money, and it's rent in general that needs banning (or rather, which needs to go unenforced; it's only enabled by legal contracts, and the law could just not recognize those contracts), not just rent on money.
Anyway, yeah you can't sell money, but you can spend it. If you can't profit from lending your money, you can spend it on something that you hope will generate more money, paying people to do things that you hope will generate profit. That still ends up transferring real wealth from the rich to the poor.
That's how "capitalism" is naively supposed to work: the rich pay the poor for their work, so the poor get richer and the richer get poorer, unless they're also working just as much. But because of rent and interest, most of what's paid to the poor just gets paid right back to the rich to borrow their wealth, wealth which does not become owned by the poor in exchange for that payment because it's only borrowed. It's rent and interest that break free markets and turn them into exploitative capitalism.
What basically universal income does is that the threshold to take a job increases. This is obvious even more clear with unemployment benefits. In a welfare state like mine one if paid unemployment benefits to perpetuity (as long as one lives) with the social welfare net paying your rent for a small apartment in the capital or a larger house in the countryside. What really can happen is that it alienates some people not to work, but at least they won't be beggars on the streets and homeless (which is a huge advantage, actually). The logic is quite reasonable: if you go to work at McDonalds, basically you are going to be left with a similar amount of money, but you have far less spare time to uhh.... discuss universal basic income in PF.
This effect is always mentioned and I have never ever seen research into it proving it.
Reply to Benkei I can't remember where I saw it, but I watched an article on how some Norwegian people became depressed, or were loosing motivation because a lot of their needs were provided for. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Reply to NOS4A2
Yes, and that's why in the UK, a lot of people think the poor are undeserving, idle and should be dispised. While we, the well off, are derserving, indeed entitled to feel superior, to have our wealth because we happened to be in a position to buy property (for example) in an area where house prices became vastly inflated and sold up and bought a number of buy to rent properties in less well off areas and charge extortionate rents from our poor tenants. We worked hard for our privelidge and sense of superiority.
Reply to Zophie We can only speculate from rough examples in the real world. I would maintain that it comes down to ‘self worth’. With or without a job people need to ‘busy themselves’ in some way.
I don’t agree, as many would paint it in a black and white manner, that people would simply turn to a life of sloth or turn to a life of personal growth.
Essentially we’d have leisure time and some would use it for recreational purposes (to literally ‘re-create’ themselves and hone skills etc.,.), but in reality I don’t think they’d be a huge difference in the problems people face and more than likely society would actively seek to deconstruct such economic harmony (meaning freedom of access to resources) to distract themselves from themselves. Some would likely work together, distinct ideas and cultures would flourish, and then these commitments would inevitably clash at some point as ‘resources’ would almost certainly become strained in some way for some period of time.
The stresses and strains of daily life is most certainly a welcome distraction for everyone to some degree. Having a goal, to get food on the table and pay bills, is a worthy achievement. Many are very happy to do just that and no more so if you took away their ability to look after themselves completely, they’d be forced into a situation where ‘leisure time’ or ‘recreation’ would be the mainstay of their existence. I’m not saying people cannot adapt to this only that they may find such circumstances far less palatable initially than they would otherwise have assumed - the cases of so-called ‘working class’ people winning the lottery eventually returning to their day job are quite clear examples of how expectations play out against reality. The ‘worth’ is often enough about people having a sense of ‘social worth’ and belonging to a group with a common history and understanding of the world.
Anyway, just scratching at the surface of where such could lead. In terms of a UBI I do think it is a good idea, but not a good idea for everyone. The instance of the virus now has shown the value of something like a UBI being a good idea for society. As a crisis management scheme it seems more than appropriate. In terms of the use of social institutes we can clearly see that reasonable safety nets prevent deaths.
One thing I am very much in favour of is FREE education. That is not to say I am against private education only that a stable and respected national system of education is a worthy goal (as far as I can see regardless of problems that may inevitably be associated with it).
Social success seems to be the main focus for juvenile individuals. Nothing wrong with that, but when this attitude is carried through into old age it upsets me. I feel bad for them. By this I mean the attitude that finding a partner, getting lots of money, and having a degree of social fame (within your group or on a media scale) have become mostly what people initially regard as ‘worth while’ and essential to ‘success’.
If UBI happens it will happen in Northern Europe first. I cannot honestly see any other countries even considering it, probably even actively opposing it, until it has been established for a few decades and with widespread economic success.
Without a degree of anarchism any UBI will likely fail. With UBI it seems obvious to me that each individual must take on a greater degree of personal responsibility rather than surrender their autonomy to a so-called ‘higher authority’ - basically freedom doesn’t come for free. Ignoring that would be disastrous.
Did Finland install its generous social safety early on? My guess is that it did.
The positive attitude towards welfare programs started early in the Nordic countries. I guess here it started with a huge land reform which was put actually through by the winners of the civil war, the whites, in 1918. That was the first sign that the classic liberalism (libertarianism) never was so close to heart even for the right-wing in Finland. The Nordic idea (typically referred to Sweden) of the Folkhemmet (the people's home) emerged at the start of the 20th Century and gained popularity especially in the 1920's.
The equivalent system to the American Social Security was launched in Finland in 1937 (two years after the US system). Unemployment benefits were started to be given in 1917. In the health care sector child health care centers were started first in the 1920's, the maternity packages were started to be given in 1930's and came to be given to all families with newborns from 1949. Universal Health Care started in it's present form I guess in the 1960's. I'd say basically Finland wanted to follow on the steps of Sweden, but WW2 made the plans to be implemented only in the 1960's as the country got more prosperous.
This effect is always mentioned and I have never ever seen research into it proving it.
It is quite true. Long term unemployment creates social exclusion.
From the point of view of poverty, curbing long-term unemployment is the key. The potential for finding jobs for the long-term unemployed is non-existent. The number of long-term unemployed who have had to fall back on labour market assistance after the maximum period of daily unemployment allowance is already over 100,000. Some of them have no working history because there was no such requirement in the previous basic daily allowance system. According to Santamäki-Vuori, the rise of long-term unemployment is introducing 'inherited poverty' into Finland. Deprivation, gloom and lack of prospects are transmitted to the children of the long-term unemployed and a poor class could be making a comeback into Finnish society. Lack of prospects is an integral element in poverty. A new phenomenon which has emerged side by side with traditional rural poverty is urban poverty, a phenomenon which might well propagate a variety of 'poverty sub-cultures' in Finland, as it has elsewhere.
(from publication POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN FINLAND
IN THE 1990S, MINISTRY OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS AND HEALTH
HELSINKI 1999)
Of course, not having any such system creates likely even more and worse problems.
In the end the experiment was rather inconclusive and basically viewed as a failure by some. Why it was only unemployed in the experiment makes it by my reasoning strange if the idea is really universal basic income.
In the end, the trial only involved people (2000 residents) who were already receiving Finland's standard conditional benefits — things like unemployment benefits, housing allowances, social assistance, and illness compensation that are afforded to unemployed residents by law.
A control group of unemployed people (around 5,000 residents) continued to receive these services. The treatment group, meanwhile, received a portion (but not all) of the same conditional benefits they had been getting before, in addition to small basic-income payments of 560 euros ($640) per month.
In 2017, that resulted in the control group receiving 7,300 euros ($8,000) in unemployment benefits and 1,300 euros ($1,400) in social assistance. The treatment group, meanwhile, only received 5,800 euros ($6,400) in unemployment benefits and 940 euros ($1,000) in social assistance that year.
One participant, Sini Marttinen, told the New York Times that her income only rose by 50 euros ($55) per month during the experiment.
"They were interested in the question that basically boiled down to: If you replaced conditional unemployment benefits with unconditional unemployment benefits, do you get increased employment?" Stynes said. By the end of the experiment, the basic-income recipients were no more likely to get a job than those in the control group.
The notion of unearned income is fundamentally flawed because income is never unearned.
"Earn" is one of those ambiguous words with many different meanings. Equivocation between those distinct meanings may make your statement true. But then the labourer might earn a wage in one sense of the word, the investor might earn a profit in another sense of the word, and even the thief might earn, in the sense of deserve the money stolen in retribution. Anyway, you should see that "income is never unearned" requires equivocation between distinct senses of "earn". And if you restrict "earn" to legal ventures, and "income" to legally sourced money, you have a useless statement which cannot even be called a tautology because it doesn't represent any reality.
Metaphysician Undercover
7k
The notion of unearned income is fundamentally flawed because income is never unearned.
— NOS4A2
"Earn" is one of those ambiguous words with many different meanings. Equivocation between those distinct meanings may make your statement true. But then the labourer might earn a wage in one sense of the word, the investor might earn a profit in another sense of the word, and even the thief might earn, in the sense of deserve the money stolen in retribution. Anyway, you should see that "income is never unearned" requires equivocation between distinct senses of "earn". And if you restrict "earn" to legal ventures, and "income" to legally sourced money, you have a useless statement which cannot even be called a tautology because it doesn't represent any reality.
As I have mentioned several times...these days, one should be able to EARN one's living by simply staying out of the way.
There are people who do more for productivity by just going home. There are bosses, fellow workers, and underlings who fall into that category. Is there anyone here who can say they do not know of someone who would have helped the productivity of a particular company...by just disappearing?
So...if we recognize that some people are only taking up space for another person or a machine that could increase productivity...that person should be paid to stay out of the way. All he/she is doing is what must be done...trying to EARN a living. Let's be real about it...and pay them to stay away. The alternative is to let them starve to death...or to hurt productivity...both of which make a lot less sense than paying them to stay away.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 04, 2020 at 13:19#4090380 likes
There are bosses, fellow workers, and underlings who fall into that category.
OK, but when we pay the bosses to disappear they might want more money than the underlings we pay to disappear. Can we make the bosses take a cut in pay, or do they disappear with a large salary?
Metaphysician Undercover
7k
There are bosses, fellow workers, and underlings who fall into that category.
— Frank Apisa
OK, but when we pay the bosses to disappear they might want more money than the underlings we pay to disappear. Can we make the bosses take a cut in pay, or do they disappear with a large salary?
Anyone who cannot be more productive than another human...or a machine, robot, or computer...
...should take up the job of "stay out of the way" specialist.
They should all get paid the same.
If a guy is a "boss" who cannot do the job as well as someone or something else...he can downsize until he fits in a niche where he can be more productive. (The opposite end of the Peter Principle ladder.)
The people who actually can be productive and who do the work...should make really decent bucks. Much more than the SOOTW specialists.
You’re right. It was an ambiguous statement, and a drunken one at that. What I mean is a wage, an income, money, doesn’t just fall out of the sky. It has to be “earned” or otherwise acquired through some form of work or effort or planning.
There are lots of ways of gaining money that does not involve productive work, NOS. Marrying into it, inheriting it, swindling others out of it are just a few examples of those ways.
Money itself is just a means to an end...and the "end" is "the distribution" of what people need and want.
Accumulating money is one of the basest ways of saying "my dick is bigger than your dick." (Yeah, yanking dicks out and actually comparing is not as base.)
We can simply invent a different, more efficient, way of distribution...especially since so much of the work to obtain the stuff we need and want is done by machines.
“Gaining money” and using it how one chooses is one thing; taking and distributing that money to others is quite another. The former is just; the latter is unjust.
As for the argument that we should institute a UBI because jobs are becoming automated, the same fears have gripped workers throughout history whenever new innovations threatened industries. In each case there has been no reason to have a UBI.
“Gaining money” and using it how one chooses is one thing; taking and distributing that money to others is quite another. The former is just; the latter is unjust.
As for the argument that we should institute a UBI because jobs are becoming automated, the same fears have gripped workers throughout history whenever new innovations threatened industries. In each case there has been no reason to have a UBI.
Okay...stick with that.
At one point in our history, there were people who stuck with the notion that kids should be put to work in coal mines...and work 10 - 12 hours days 5 1/2 days a week.
Wondering what are thoughts after a very successful large scale UBI plan during COVID-19, and even smaller scale permanent UBI plans going into effect in my state of residence?
It's a good idea to pump money into the bottom of the economy, because money creates value as it spirals upward, however, I think a significant increase in minimum wage, with tax breaks for companies paying it, is a better approach than a Universal Basic Income - because value would still be derived for what is effectively a giveaway, but a giveaway that doesn't point a giant spotlight at quantitative easing. In this way, I think you can maintain all the natural capitalist incentives and avoid many of the inflationary effects on prices and wages of giving away free cash.
Two other considerations are giving away free money will always draw a crowd, so you'll immediately have increased immigration. (Or, you can attract businesses with low tax rates - even if this cancels out with high minimum wages.)
Also, you open the door to Communism. To ensure people are not claiming UBI in all 50 states of the Union, you'd have to means test it in the sense you'd need to know who had claimed. It would require a massive invasive bureaucracy to give away free cash - which is just a hop, skip and a slump from Communism.
If there is a starving person in the street, am I entitled to mug you and give what I take from you to the starving person?
Obviously not. I could point out that this person is starving and ask you to recognize that you have some obligation to help that person out, or I could get off my high horse and help them out myself. But what I would not be entitled to do is mug you for the starving person's sake.
Yet that's what the state does. It's unjust.
Unless it is those who created the problem who are being taxed to pay for it - parents, that is. But why should I be made to pay for the bad luck or fecklessness of your offspring? It is unjust to make me pay for the education of your offspring, or to provide a safety net for them should they make bad choices or be unlucky enough to have no marketable skills, or pay to have them policed and governed.
So by all means let's have a universal basic income - I agree that all innocent persons are entitled to lives of dignity free from the oppression of having to work - but for christ's sake make sure the right people pay for it. Tax the polluters: the breeders. Pay the cost - the full cost - of your silly and self-indulgent and immoral decision. Those of us who have had the good sense and moral insight not to subject others to a life of ignorance in a dangerous world full of random hazards and depraved people and in which you have to work or starve, should not pay a penny.
It's a good idea to pump money into the bottom of the economy, because money creates value as it spirals upward, however, I think a significant increase in minimum wage, with tax breaks for companies paying it, is a better approach than a Universal Basic Income - because value would still be derived for what is effectively a giveaway, but a giveaway that doesn't point a giant spotlight at quantitative easing. In this way, I think you can maintain all the natural capitalist incentives and avoid many of the inflationary effects on prices and wages of giving away free cash.
Why would you need to give companies a tax break for paying the minimum wage? Wages are always deducted from taxable profit anyways.
Two other considerations are giving away free money will always draw a crowd, so you'll immediately have increased immigration. (Or, you can attract businesses with low tax rates - even if this cancels out with high minimum wages.)
Assuming you pay the UBI to non-citizens, which seems unlikely.
Also, you open the door to Communism. To ensure people are not claiming UBI in all 50 states of the Union, you'd have to means test it in the sense you'd need to know who had claimed.
I don't think you need any kind of massive bureaucracy. That's kind of the advantage of an universal basic income. You can just add it to the taxable income of anyone who claims it. Since people already have to declare their income (and usually the employer transmits that information to the tax authorities automatically), it'd not create any new difficulties.
The notion that people should be allowed to keep their income and wealth secret from the state is dubious anyways.
Except, the state doesn't do that, the state has democratic legitimacy and the state is the institution establishing property as a right in the first place.
so it's okay to mug me and to give the proceeds to the hungry person if there's been a vote on it?? What moral planet are you on?
You aren't mugged. That's just nonsense. If you have a contract that entitles you to an income, that income is already subject to taxes. The same is true for wealth which you acquire under the express protection of the state. None of these things is somehow naturally assigned to you in full and without obligation.
Reply to Echarmion I do not voluntarily pay tax. I am taxed and if I refuse to pay I will be kidnapped.
It is unjust. Voting on it won't make it just. And there is no contract. I will be taxed on a transaction whether or not I agree to it.
After several moments googling a subject I know very little about, it seems that:
"salaries, wages, commissions, and bonuses you have paid to the employees of your small business are tax-deductible expenses if they are deemed to be: Ordinary and necessary, and reasonable in amount."
If a company unilaterally decided to raise the minimum wage of its employees - maybe that wouldn't be deemed ordinary, necessary and reasonable in amount. But if government did so, it is by legal definition ordinary, necessary and reasonable.
Reply to bert1 Question begging. It is not the 'best' system. It violates rights.
My system is better. Make the polluters pay. That is, make make parents pay. They have violated rights and owe their offspring a living and others protection from their offspring. That debt can rightfully be collected. Thus taxing parents so that they pay for the problems they have created is just. Taxing others is not - it is extracting money with menaces, and that's wrong unless the money is owed.
My system is better. Make the polluters pay. That is, make make parents pay. They have violated rights and owe their offspring a living and others protection from their offspring. That debt can rightfully be collected. Thus taxing parents so that they pay for the problems they have created is just. Taxing others is not - it is extracting money with menaces, and that's wrong unless the money is owed.
OK, so a dictatorship with these values. What if the dictator changes her mind?
My system is better. Make the polluters pay. That is, make make parents pay. They have violated rights and owe their offspring a living and others protection from their offspring. That debt can rightfully be collected. Thus taxing parents so that they pay for the problems they have created is just. Taxing others is not - it is extracting money with menaces, and that's wrong unless the money is owed.
So you can urinate in the river as much as you like because you don't have relatives downstream?
Reply to bert1 No. Blimey. Baby steps. It is wrong to mug me and give the proceeds to someone who has less. That's wrong. Okay?
Now, would it magically become okay if you put the matter to a vote - shall I mug bartricks and give the proceeds to this person who has less than Bartricks?
No. Obviously.
Bert reasons: oh, so, er, you're now in favour of a dictatorship!!
No, Berty. It would also be wrong if a dictator decides to mug me and give the proceeds to a person who has less.
What you don't seem to understand is that our rights - the basic moral rights that a state, if it has any justification at all, is supposed to protect - are not a function of votes. You don't have a right to life and a right to non-interference because someone voted on it.
This isn't about democracy versus dictatorship. This is about what the state is entitled to do.
Let's say you need an organ. YOu'll die unless you get it. I have a spare one inside me. Are you entitled to cut me open and take it? No, obviously not. Can you hire someone else to do it on your behalf? No, obviously not.
You may ask me to give it to you. Perhaps I ought to give it to you - not denying that - but still, it's not something you're entitled to take without my consent.
And by extension, someone else is not entitled to take it out of me without my consent and give it to you. Right?
Likewise, if I have some spare money and you need it, you have to ask for it and rely on my generosity or the generosity of others, not just take it from me. And by extension, if someone else decides to take it off me and give it to you, then they have wronged me as much as you would have done if you'd done so.
Simple and obvious stuff.
What if I'm responsible for you needing the organ in question? What if I voluntarily did something to you without your consent that resulted in you needing an organ? Well, now it's plausible that I owe you the organ and that this is a debt that can be paid with force if necessary. So 'now' you may - plausibly - take the organ from me even if I do not wish to give it to you. And by extension, others may do it on your behalf.
Hence why it is parents - who, by their voluntary procreative decisions knowingly burden others with a lifetime of work among other things - owe those they create a living, a living that can be extracted by force if necessary. THus parents can justly be taxed to provide everyone (bar themselves, of course) with a minimum income. (More than minimum, incidentally - enough to live on with dignity).
But those of us who have been decent enough not to do that to others should not pay a penny. Not until or unless we start violating the rights of others.
Explain how what you said was implied by anything I said. Go on.
A stream flows in one direction - like time. If you pollute the river upstream, you are impinging on the rights those downstream. If you pollute the planet now - if effects subsequent generations. Riparian Rights asserts the rights of those downstream to enjoy the same rights as those upstream.
By asserting that you don't have to pay tax on pollution because you have no offspring, is essentially saying that you can piss in the river upstream, because you don't have relatives downstream. But there are still people downstream - forced to drink your piss. The fact they are not related to you is neither here nor there, is it?
Reply to counterpunch Er, what on earth are you on about? Saying 'polluters should pay' is not equivalent to saying "I am allowed to pollute". I can only marvel at the reasoning skills that permit you to think that "polluters should pay" implies "I can pollute".
Er, what on earth are you on about? Saying 'polluters should pay' is not equivalent to saying "I am allowed to pollute". I can only marvel at the reasoning skills that permit you to think that "polluters should pay" implies "I can pollute".
I marvel at your inability to grasp the concept of Riparian Rights. Personally, I think taxation is not the right way to address this problem. It's the blunt tool of choice, but for me - I'd harness limitless magma heat energy, and extract carbon from the atmosphere.
The only reason any of us have a carbon footprint is because we still use fossil fuels - when all the clean energy we could ever need, and more - is right there beneath our feet.
Taxation reduces demand - for the poor. The rich don't give a shit; carry on as they are, while poor people are dying of hypothermia because they can't afford fuel. I cannot understand how the left can advocate such a policy approach; while weeping buckets about equality.
It's fucked up, but your objections are still misconceived. The fact you don't have kids is irrelevant to your responsibility to leave behind a liveable planet. And treating people as pollution is doubly fucked up. Fossil fuels are the polluter, and there is an alternative, more than adequate to replace them entirely.
IF you've had kids, then you owe them a living. They don't have to earn it. You owe them it. I mean, you knowingly brought them into a dangerous world in which you have to work or die, other things being equal. That was wicked, and you owe them a living. (And you owe them protection from all the depraved monsters that live here). You owe them the lot: a good, dignified life, whatever it costs.
It is the basic intuition behind the idea of the universal basic income: we're all entitled - entitled - to a good life (until we behave like arseholes, of course). The world won't just provide it to us though. Not without us doing things. But we - we who have been bred but have not bred - are not the ones who owe it to ourselves to do those things, for our being here was in no way something we did to ourselves. It was what others did to us. So they ought to do what's necessary - they ought to work to provide us with the dignified living that we deserve (deserve, that is, until we make the same immoral decision they made and decide to breed). And if they don't, they can be forced: forced by the system, through taxation.
The state has, for many people, become the parent. But it is our parents who owe us livings. Not just all other people. Our parents specifically. I don't owe you a living, for example. Why on earth would I?
But most parents, by their very nature, don't do much planning and aren't particularly intelligent (for having kids is, as well as immoral, unbelievably stupid). And thus most parents can't afford it. So tax all of them. Make them all pay into a common pot - and tax them what it takes - and use taht common pot to provide the rest of us with the guaranteed income we're all entitled to (those of us who have not bred, of course).
With all due respect, who cares what you think you're entitled to. In a state of nature you'd be driven from the tribe for refusing to reciprocate, and die torn apart by wild dogs. Your adolescent "I didn't ask to be born" antinatalist caterwauling - in no way entitles you to a good life. Reciprocation is the basis of civilisation. Make yourself useful - live up to your responsibilities, or bog off and die.
With the greatest of respect, who cares what you think you're entitled to.
Because it is not just what I am entitled to, but what everyone who has been bred but hasn't bred is entitled to. And I am showing it by reasoned argument. So, you can not care, but if you're reasonable you will.
And now, rather than address the argument, you engage in witless insults. The world needs more of you.
And now, rather than address the argument, you engage in witless insults.
Not at all. I'm describing life in a state of nature in the hope you might understand that your imagined values are civilisation dependent, such that you might recognise the hypocrisy of claiming you have no responsibility to that civilisation.
after assuming that I am not useful. You think that's not an insult? You think taht doesn't make you someone who has a childish temper and can't treat an argument as an argument but has to take it personally?
Let me explain: when someone says "parents should pay all the taxes" and you reply "bog off and die" then you are being rude. Now, if the claim that "parents should pay all the taxes" really angers you and you think it is outrageous because you're a parent and it's all fuzzy in your head but the nasty reasoning man is saying things that seem to imply you're not a great person, that still doesn't make my claim an insult. It's a theory. And I can defend it to the hilt and will to all comers. And all comers will, like you, get angry and insult me and think that I was somehow insulting them, even though all I was doing was making arguments that show them to be unreasonable people with tempers. Of course, once you insult me I'll insult you back a lot better, but that's reciprocity and it is the basis of all civilization, isn't it?
I suggest you now resist the temptation to go on about me and try instead to address the philosophical case that I made for parents being the ones who owe the rest of us a guaranteed income.
Reply to Bartricks How can one meet unreason but with unreason? If you're claiming everyone else owes you a living for the injury of bringing you into the world, there's a solution for that. It's not one I recommend. Rather, I suggest accepting that you're born - and that the world is a difficult place. There comes a time when you have to wean yourself off the tit - and hunt. But you say, I didn't ask to be born, and because I'm not going to contribute to the ongoing existence of the tribe, I'm going to sit by the fire, demanding others bring me more meat. Who the fuck do you think you are?
Reply to Bartricks You skip back and forth between UBI and environmental taxation. I talk about one, you talk about the other. Pick one, and stick with it.
Taxation reduces demand - for the poor. The rich don't give a shit; carry on as they are, while poor people are dying of hypothermia because they can't afford fuel. I cannot understand how the left can advocate such a policy approach; while weeping buckets about equality.
That's because the left you are talking about are not the left they were 40 years ago. Taxation can absolutely work to combat inequality, and has done so after WW2. But the last 40 years we have seen a consistent process of making the taxes less progressive (in some cases, like the US, taxes have become effectively regressive) while trying to sustain roughly similar social programs. The result is that the burden of these programs falls more and more on the middle class, which consequentially is breaking apart under the strain.
International agreements all enshrine the free movement of capital and goods, but contain no provisions for the cross-border taxation of profits and wealth. The result is that states are less and less able - and due to increasing interstate competition also less and less willing - to tax the wealthy. The resulting alienation of the least privileged classes leads to increasing identitarian conflict and isolationist sentiment. See e.g. Brexit and Trump, but also the likes of Orban and Le Pen. Meanwhile, all the center left has to offer is statements of soildarity and a focus on identitarian conflicts of a different type, while offering no alternative economic vision.
No, I've been talking about universal income throughout. No doubt the word 'polluter' confused you.
I'm not confused. You are. We could harness limitless amounts of clean energy from magma; and live sustainably and well long into the future. Consequently, people are not pollution, and over-population is not the problem. The problem is the mis-application of technology. Given an application of technologies in relation to a scientific understanding of reality (assuming only that we wish to survive) the earth could easily support the 10-12bn people projected by 2100 - sustainably and profitably.
It all goes back to Malthus - and his Essay on Population 1770 ish - that predicted population would outstrip food supply and there would be mass starvation. He was wrong; human beings invented tractors and fertilizers - and have out-produced need and population growth through technological innovation. We can continue to do so. Nonetheless, Malthus ideas continue to inform the "pay more-have less, tax this-stop that" left wing anti-capitalist green approach to sustainability. And it's in those terms you construe people as pollution. Your disincentivisation of reproduction through taxation would be hugely counter productive - re: aging populations, in a sustainable future based on magma energy. I felt forced to counter this attitude.
Reply to Echarmion I'm not a tax expert. I attempted to google some information on the socio-economic distribution of wealth in support of the idea of a growing middle class, but the ONS data is labyrinthine and my internet is a trickle. I cannot imagine any more of a burdensome social program than UBI - but haven't got the demographic data to say conclusively that the middle class would be more burdened by it, than benefitting from it. I think it is in general terms a good idea to get money to the bottom of the economy, as I've said - but worry that UBI would undermine natural incentives, whereas, significantly increasing minimum wage could be revenue neutral for companies, and achieve much the same result - while retaining, indeed promoting socially useful incentives.
I'm not a corporate tax expert. I am aware of the perception that large companies don't pay a fair share, but I don't know how true that is. I secretly suspect they can just as justifiably claim to be over taxed as the middle class; but that doesn't fit with a jealous left wing narrative. Philosophically, I always consider Bill Gates - and imagine him in his shed, or whatever, noodling away at his computer, trying to invent windows - about to unleash an enormous wave of value, and I cannot be jealous of his success - such that I demand he be taxed to death in every country, state and townsville that has wifi.
I attempted to google some information on the socio-economic distribution of wealth in support of the idea of a growing middle class, but the ONS data is labyrinthine and my internet is a trickle.
Oh the middle class isn't growing right now, but it was essentially invented in the mid 20th century, a period of high tax rates.
but worry that UBI would undermine natural incentives, whereas, significantly increasing minimum wage could be revenue neutral for companies, and achieve much the same result - while retaining, indeed promoting socially useful incentives.
Yeah, I understand the concern. Unfortunately it's hard to make conclusive statements on this without large scale experimentation. Which is to say we'd need a major economy - something the size of France, Germany or the UK at least - to actually implement an UBI to have any real chance of getting a good idea of the effects. UBI isn't uncontroversial even on the left. It should be noted, however, that basic income - that is some form of welfare to keep you alive - doesn't seem to have destroyed people's willingness to work.
I'm not a corporate tax expert. I am aware of the perception that large companies don't pay a fair share, but I don't know how true that is. I secretly suspect they can just as justifiably claim to be over taxed as the middle class; but that doesn't fit with a jealous left wing narrative
This sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance. It's easy enough to find accounts of how corporate tax avoidance works, and what kind of results this has - Amazon paid 0 federal income tax in 2018 and 2019 thanks to a clever licensing scheme, for example.
Of course not all companies are the same. It's mostly large, multinational corporations that have access to all the tricks.
Philosophically, I always consider Bill Gates - and imagine him in his shed, or whatever, noodling away at his computer, trying to invent windows - about to unleash an enormous wave of value, and I cannot be jealous of his success - such that I demand he be taxed to death in every country, state and townsville that has wifi.
I don't really see why asking for high taxes on rich people is a sign of jealousy. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a principle of solidarity, not jealousy. Would it have been unfair to tax Bill Gates' 10th or 100th million earned at 70%, or 80 or 90? I think a few tens of millions is enough for anyone, does that make me jealous?
it's hard to make conclusive statements on this without large scale experimentation. Which is to say we'd need a major economy - something the size of France, Germany or the UK at least - to actually implement an UBI to have any real chance of getting a good idea of the effects.
That sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance to me. Ha ha. I've offered my inexpert opinion Echarmion. I am more naturally inclined toward approaches that raise the floor, rather than pull down the ceiling. It's like some Far Side cartoon - two stalls, one says 'free money' and has an enormous queue, and the other says "a fair days pay for a fair days work" - and no-one's interested. Tempting offer... but if there are less drastic means to have much the same effect, then what's the real purpose of UBI? Is it in fact, primarily - a political statement?
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a principle of solidarity, not jealousy.
So too are all the people at the free money booth in solidarity, but they're not there because they love each other. I don't think solidarity moves people like rational self interest, and offering free money appeals to rational self interest even while being a footbridge to communism.
That sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance to me. Ha ha. I've offered my inexpert opinion Echarmion. I am more naturally inclined toward approaches that raise the floor, rather than pull down the ceiling
Well that's essentially what I mean by ideologically motivated ignorance. It wasn't intended as a personal insult. I have my own ideologically motivated ignorance. I just wanted to point out that you seem less inclined to look into something which might be in contradiction to your existing views.
It's like some Far Side cartoon - two stalls, one says 'free money' and has an enormous queue, and the other says "a fair days pay for a fair days work" - and no-one's interested.
Metaphors are all fine and good, but it's too easy to just brush the question aside with a smirk. Rising inequality is a real problem, and one that directly impacts your stated aim of providing everyone with cheap and clean energy.
Tempting offer... but if there are less drastic means to have much the same effect, then what's the real purpose of UBI? Is it in fact, primarily - a political statement?
Of course different people have different purposes in mind when they make a proposal. But are there less drastic measures that do the same thing? The people affected by UBI are not the same as the people affected by a minimum wage increase.
So too are all the people at the free money booth in solidarity, but they're not there because they love each other. I don't believe the communist manifesto was ever a legitimate expression of the working class interest.
I don't think solidarity moves people like rational self interest, and offering free money appeals to rational self interest even while being a footbridge to communism.
That's a false dichotomy. Solidarity is part of a "rational self interest". Of course when people talk about "rational self interest", they rarely take these words at their usual meaning, and instead refer to some kind of purely commercial cost-benefit analysis.
As to the "footbridge to communism" part, please imagine me rolling my eyes theatrically. The countries of western Europe have by and large been giving out "free money" to people for more than 70 years, and communism is farther away than ever.
No. Blimey. Baby steps. It is wrong to mug me and give the proceeds to someone who has less. That's wrong. Okay?
Agreed!
Now, would it magically become okay if you put the matter to a vote - shall I mug bartricks and give the proceeds to this person who has less than Bartricks?
Not magically, but democratically, well, yes, unfortunately. I'd disagree, but that's just tough for me, as democracy is the least bad way of deciding things.
No. Obviously.
Not obviously. We're talking about practical rules, not my personal views.
Bert reasons: oh, so, er, you're now in favour of a dictatorship!!
Well, you're not in favour of voting to decide what is socially acceptable.
No, Berty. It would also be wrong if a dictator decides to mug me and give the proceeds to a person who has less.
I agree.
What you don't seem to understand is that our rights - the basic moral rights that a state, if it has any justification at all, is supposed to protect - are not a function of votes. You don't have a right to life and a right to non-interference because someone voted on it.
That is exactly why I have a right to life. In 1998 the UK formally adopted the ECHR and enacted the Human Rights Act 1998.
This isn't about democracy versus dictatorship. This is about what the state is entitled to do.[quote]
*shrug* What the state is and is not entitled to do is entirely dependent on how laws are made.
[quote]Let's say you need an organ. YOu'll die unless you get it. I have a spare one inside me. Are you entitled to cut me open and take it? No, obviously not. Can you hire someone else to do it on your behalf? No, obviously not.
It depends on what the law is in the jurisdiction in question. These are legal matters.
You may ask me to give it to you. Perhaps I ought to give it to you - not denying that - but still, it's not something you're entitled to take without my consent.
And by extension, someone else is not entitled to take it out of me without my consent and give it to you. Right?
Likewise, if I have some spare money and you need it, you have to ask for it and rely on my generosity or the generosity of others, not just take it from me. And by extension, if someone else decides to take it off me and give it to you, then they have wronged me as much as you would have done if you'd done so.
Simple and obvious stuff.
What if I'm responsible for you needing the organ in question? What if I voluntarily did something to you without your consent that resulted in you needing an organ? Well, now it's plausible that I owe you the organ and that this is a debt that can be paid with force if necessary. So 'now' you may - plausibly - take the organ from me even if I do not wish to give it to you. And by extension, others may do it on your behalf.
These are legal matters. To influence the law according to my values, I can vote in a democracy.
Hence why it is parents - who, by their voluntary procreative decisions knowingly burden others with a lifetime of work among other things - owe those they create a living, a living that can be extracted by force if necessary. THus parents can justly be taxed to provide everyone (bar themselves, of course) with a minimum income. (More than minimum, incidentally - enough to live on with dignity).
But those of us who have been decent enough not to do that to others should not pay a penny. Not until or unless we start violating the rights of others.
Rights only make sense to me in a legal context. Again, these are all legal matters.
As a global redistribution of capital from the haves to the have-nots, UBI is also a form of collective bargaining that reduces the incentive for people to work in the non-desirable jobs, thereby putting upward pressure on the wages of those jobs. It should also encourage the elimination of bullshit jobs that don't need to exist in the first place, as well as hastening the robot revolution in order to completely eliminate the undesirable jobs whose cost of labour is increasing.
Metaphors are all fine and good, but it's too easy to just brush the question aside with a smirk. Rising inequality is a real problem, and one that directly impacts your stated aim of providing everyone with cheap and clean energy.
Metaphors are fantastic, aren't they? They're like similes in play form. I'm trying to think of one that demonstrates that inequality is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. There's always the brain surgeon/ road-sweeper analogy. Why disincentivise further, making the extraordinary effort necessary to become a brain surgeon? Don't we already have enough road-sweepers? I don't look down on roadsweepers. I was an industrial cleaner in the construction industry for the longest time. I'm very familiar with a brush and shovel, but I made the effort to become a philosopher. Bit of a mistake really. I'm a great cook too. I could have been a celebrity chef, but I went for the philosophy. Ho hum! But as we're here, I flatter myself I know a thing or too and can assure you nothing's been brushed aside with a smirk. I'm just witty!
My view is that inequality isn't a problem if the poorest have enough, and effectively limitless clean energy from magma can do that sustainably. Capitalism can be sustained, which is fortunate because communism has failed quite badly quite often, only recently! Something you seem to brush aside easily!
The people affected by UBI are not the same as the people affected by a minimum wage increase.
That's true. It would be people like me as an industrial cleaner, who would be able to afford to keep a roof above their head, and would pay the landlord rent, who would go out and buy a car. Call it the trickle up theory of economics. Note that at every juncture the right motives are promoted in accord with the rational self interest of the individual, and to the benefit of society. I think the left are better pushing on a living wage than trying to sneak communism in by the back door, by handing out a big bag full of someone else's cash!
I'm trying to think of one that demonstrates that inequality is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. There's always the brain surgeon/ road-sweeper analogy.
I have pointed out elsewhere that inequality is not simply "different outcomes". But regardless, the problem isn't that some theoretical amount of inequality might perhaps be good. It's that the current amount of inequality is bad.
My view is that inequality isn't a problem if the poorest have enough, and effectively limitless clean energy from magma can do that sustainably.
Just be careful not to forget actually involving the poor in your calculation of what's "enough", because they won't just sit around watching you build your utopia if they're fed only the scraps.
I think the left are better pushing on a living wage than trying to sneak communism in by the back door, by handing out a big bag full of someone else's cash!
I'd personally he happy with the left getting any kind of political momentum going somewhere, but for the time being, they appear gridlocked most anywhere.
As for handing out others people's cash: it's very important that we start doing it, because right now it's much too concentrated.
I have pointed out elsewhere that inequality is not simply "different outcomes". But regardless, the problem isn't that some theoretical amount of inequality might perhaps be good. It's that the current amount of inequality is bad.
In what sense bad? If you're saying it's bad because the poorest don't have enough, then your argument has my sympathies. What can be done? How about increasing minimum wage? But if your argument is that inequality is bad because some people have pot-loads, I don't agree. Large concentrations of capital are necessary to an economy - in ways I don't pretend to understand.
Just be careful not to forget actually involving the poor in your calculation of what's "enough", because they won't just sit around watching you build your utopia if they're fed only the scraps.
I'm trying to think of ways we can carry on much as we are, and suggest an approach I think means things would get better over time as wealth trickled up through the economy and magma energy opened up the way to a far more prosperous sustainable future. I think all legitimate interests can be reconciled - insofar as magma hydrogen would not need to compete with existing fossil fuel technologies right away, and so infrastructure costs could be divided from environmental benefits - gained by extracting carbon directly from the atmosphere. Tackling the problem from the supply side does not imply authoritarian government imposing poverty on people forever after. If not wanting equality of poverty is utopian; if wanting genuine sustainability is utopian, then I'm utopian, but not unrealistically so.
Large concentrations of capital are necessary to an economy - in ways I don't pretend to understand.
Certainly, robust economies require capital to function properly. The problem with 'concentrated capital' is that too few agents control it, and may apply it towards unproductive ends such as furthering the concentration. That is precisely what has happened in the global economy. A tiny number of Uber-wealthy individuals control a very large percentage (50%+) of capital. (How tiny? It numbers in the dozens.). It doesn't matter, in some ways, whether it is a few dozen super-rich individuals or a government. A soviet-style monopoly of wealth is as counterproductive as a yacht full of gold plated parasites.
Highly concentrated wealth deprives a few million (out of 8 billion) individuals from fielding and developing new ideas. Your geo-thermal/hydrogen idea will probably remain undeveloped for lack of capital.
There will probably always be poor people, because "poor" is relative, A man with $1,000,000 is poor among multi-billionaires. A third-world family with enough to eat and a roof over their heads is poor among affluent first-worlders. I don't know how to define "absolute" (non-relative) poverty. Starvation, unsheltered exposure to the weather, and lack of somewhat clean water to slake one's thirst would probably qualify as "absolute poverty", but that doesn't help someone with zero cash living in an urban homeless shelter and being fed slop twice a day.
It is desirable to have wealth vigorously percolate up the economy (rather than a glacially slow trickle-down), but getting the wealth to the base so it can percolate up requires a revolutionary change in the way wealth is controlled. I don't see that on the horizon.
But if your argument is that inequality is bad because some people have pot-loads, I don't agree. Large concentrations of capital are necessary to an economy - in ways I don't pretend to understand.
It's genuinely baffling to see someone so confidently make an argument from ignorance.
In what sense bad? If you're saying it's bad because the poorest don't have enough, then your argument has my sympathies. What can be done? How about increasing minimum wage?
It's bad because it damages social cohesion, in ways that are already quite obvious. You cannot expect people to not notice that their real income doesn't go up, while the stock market breaks record after record and managers in large companies get millions of dollars in bonuses even if they fail. You can't expect people to not notice that lots of new flats are being build, but they are build for international investors who buy them and sometimes don't even rent them out, on the grounds that the value of real estate increases so quickly that it's better to leave them empty. In order for people to work together in a society, they need to actually feel that there is a minimum level of justice involved. Else they turn to one extremist or the other. Europe has been there before.
Tackling the problem from the supply side does not imply authoritarian government imposing poverty on people forever after. If not wanting equality of poverty is utopian; if wanting genuine sustainability is utopian, then I'm utopian, but not unrealistically so.
But the supply still does need to be build first, and then the question of who decides how the supply is handled needs to be answered. Not everyone will own their own geothermal plant. I imagine you don't want one giant profit-driven conglomerate to own all the new power plants, and for good reason.
It is desirable to have wealth vigorously percolate up the economy (rather than a glacially slow trickle-down), but getting the wealth to the base so it can percolate up requires a revolutionary change in the way wealth is controlled. I don't see that on the horizon.
Certainly not while people fervently defend the right of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to be arbitrarily rich on the basis that any kind of redistribution is born from jealousy and leads to communism. It also doesn't help that very few people are aware of the economic history of the last century in their own country, let alone the world.
It's bad because it damages social cohesion, in ways that are already quite obvious. You cannot expect people to not notice that their real income doesn't go up, while the stock market breaks record after record and managers in large companies get millions of dollars in bonuses even if they fail.
If there's anyone here putting a strain on social cohesion, I'd argue - that's you. Indeed, it seems to me that the left's standard strategy is to point out things that strain social cohesion and exploit the resulting discontent. Thing is it doesn't matter to me that large concentrations of capital stand as surety for insurance and pensions and goodness knows what? What matters to me is that I've something to do I'm capable of doing, that justifies my existence, and keeps the wolf from the door. But then I don't suppose you'd understand the pride there is in coming home, covered in dirt, having performed heroic labours, and slapping an envelope down on the kitchen table.
Certainly not while people fervently defend the right of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to be arbitrarily rich on the basis that any kind of redistribution is born from jealousy and leads to communism. It also doesn't help that very few people are aware of the economic history of the last century in their own country, let alone the world.
Building the magma energy infrastructure would require political agreement in the first instance, but also, backing with significant amounts of capital. Were it the fossil fuel industry's capital, for example, they would be in a position to help determine how magma energy were applied - and that might be sufficient to earn their cooperation in what would ultimately be a transition. The problem is disorderly divestment. Magma energy would give us time to transition.
But the supply still does need to be build first, and then the question of who decides how the supply is handled needs to be answered. Not everyone will own their own geothermal plant. I imagine you don't want one giant profit-driven conglomerate to own all the new power plants, and for good reason.
Were it Jeff Bezos' money, or Bill Gates money I imagine an LNG tanker full of liquid hydrogen fuel emblazoned with their logo - pulling into harbour within ten years. That's an economic future I could live with; given an economic history I'm very well aware of from a political perspective, thank you, even if corporate taxation is a huge and complex specialty I'm not overly familiar with. My apologies if you're still baffled, but I don't consider it utopian, or even unlikely. It is out of the box thinking in a very real sense; but then the most probable course doesn't lead anywhere good, and so arguably, the answer would initially appear improbable. My concern is to show that it's possible.
It is desirable to have wealth vigorously percolate up the economy (rather than a glacially slow trickle-down), but getting the wealth to the base so it can percolate up requires a revolutionary change in the way wealth is controlled. I don't see that on the horizon.
That's my point though, I don't think it does require revolutionary change. UBI is revolutionary, but governments already have the tools in the form of minimum wage legislation and business taxes, and no-one could look askance upon government setting those to achieve a trickle up effect. How vigorous a percolation that could be would depend on things like inflationary pressures - and would that be such a bad thing with interest rates close to zero? I don't know. My concern is that the subsequent economic growth would be sustainable - and because I think it could be, an anti-capitalist, neo communist approach to sustainability is not necessary, and indeed, would be counter productive in a sustainable future.
Your geo-thermal/hydrogen idea will probably remain undeveloped for lack of capital.
Echmarion is a handful, but note how the competition has driven me to surpass myself! Imagine I succeeded; I think this is unlikely, but imagine I was given the money to develop this technology myself, and hired people and scoped locations, and built facilities, and started delivering boat loads of sustainability, would you resent me my success? Because I wouldn't resent someone else developing these ideas, (and I think that more likely), nor resent them the rewards of having risked their capital and applied their minds. I'm a philosopher, not a politician or a businessman. I'd still be a philosopher if I had to live in a clay pot in the market square!
Reply to counterpunch I call it 'revolutionary change' only because the installed Uber-wealthy class might not be dislodged by a gradual, evolutionary process. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from major change.
but imagine I was given the money to develop this technology
Major industry develops that way. Someone has a working undeveloped technology with major potential. Investors give a group the money to start production, whether that be a cast-iron steam engine works, new steel plant, a transistor factory, or a large-scale battery storage farm--whatever it is. There is generally risk involved--that the investment might not pay off well, or worse, might not pay off at all. The Uber-wealthy are not risk takers. There is no need for them to take risks--they already have such a large share of the wealth. They can afford to be indifferent.
That is the distortion the disproportionate distribution of global wealth has. The few thousand people controlling 70% of world wealth starve innovation.
Geo-thermal / H-power is just one more good idea languishing on the shelf.
UBI and open borders and free immigration do not mix. Because eventually nobody will do anything (at first), expecting others to do so for various reasons, and currency will devalue. We live in an open society. Eventually nobody will want to do anything, why toil all day in the hot sun or worse frigid arid land if not all to reap what I sow all for myself? To help a neighbor? Sure, that's understandable. Now multiply that by a world population of 8 billion.. it becomes kind of demanding. Unrealistic even.
Or even not, everyone gets more, so I will charge more. Because someone else somewhere up the line will do the same, for what I need, and now it costs me more.
There is little difference between UBI and just marking up the current currency to be twice it's value. It will cost me twice as much, so I will charge twice as much. Just keeps the poor poorer and the rich richer.
There's more room for inequality if I have to pay $250 for a weeks worth of groceries instead of 25 cents, like it used to be (slight exaggeration). Honestly the only blame is the criminals and counterfeiters. It's more about open education, rather lack of mandated raising of children. People steal, people pay for it. Not the people who steal of course. And enter law enforcement. Who need to be paid as well. Criminals. We all know one. But no one wants to do anything about it. And so the cycle will continue. Or will it?
How vigorous a percolation that could be would depend on things like inflationary pressures - and would that be such a bad thing with interest rates close to zero? I don't know.
I don't know either, but I do know that historically (going back a long way--even the Romans) inflation has been a problem. True, interest rates are low right now, despite big cash infusions into the economy. That could change pretty quickly. During the inflation spike in the 1980s, banks were paying up to 15% on savings (for a few months--a splendid rate if one happened to have cash under the mattress). They managed to get that under control, so that the top savings rates were more like 7% in 2006. The big crash in inflated investment values happened in 2008. Since then, interest rates have been low.
One of the reasons Economics is the Dismal Science is that economists rarely (or is it never?) see disaster coming.
How is it exactly that concentrated wealth deprives a few million individuals from fielding and developing new ideas? I ask because if I see concentrated wealth or capital I see an opportunity, so long as it isn’t in state hands.
Reply to NOS4A2 it isn't merely "somewhat concentrated capital" that is the problem; it is extremely concentrated capital that is problematic, whether it is in private or state hands.
The extremely concentrated wealth isn't invested in production; it is generally invested in paper speculation -- derivatives, currencies... stuff like that. Some of the Uber-wealthy made a lot of money in the sphere of actual goods and services, but once the piles are sufficiently large, it tends to be shifted into the less productive stuff.
I'm not suggesting you buy Thomas Piketty's books; but check out an article or two about him. At least, that's the way I understand it.
BTW, you are over-estimating the harm of money in state hands and under-estimating the harm of money in private hands.
Maybe I do underestimate the harm of private money. That’s why I’m wondering why I should believe I am deprived wherever wealth or capital is concentrated. I see opportunity in private concentrations of wealth and capital. It’s approachable, reasonable, and ultimately, through varying degrees of effort, accessible, I can provide services, seek employment, investment or opportunity. This is an obvious oversimplification, but the basics hold, I think. If the terms are not to my liking I can refuse them. Nothing leaves my pocket that I have not willingly given them. So I have trouble seeing what it is that deprives me of anything.
On the other hand there is an all-powerful institution dedicated to taking my wealth every day and skimming from every purchase I make. This transfer of wealth is what concerns me because I have no say in it. I am unable to bargain or engage in common enterprise with it, or refuse its terms. It sets the rules and enforces them. And it is for this reason private wealth tries to curry favor with them, at everyone’s peril.
If there's anyone here putting a strain on social cohesion, I'd argue - that's you. Indeed, it seems to me that the left's standard strategy is to point out things that strain social cohesion and exploit the resulting discontent.
A lot of things "seem" to you this way and that, which is a nice way of saying you don't really know, and you're just making stuff up to suit your existing narrative of evil lefties out to destroy the world.
But then I don't suppose you'd understand the pride there is in coming home, covered in dirt, having performed heroic labours, and slapping an envelope down on the kitchen table.
Because in your mind I'm a leftist, so I must be an unemployed guy living in his parent's basement with a Che Guevara T-Shirt, right?
I see opportunity in private concentrations of wealth and capital. It’s approachable, reasonable, and ultimately, through varying degrees of effort, accessible, I can provide services, seek employment, investment or opportunity. This is an obvious oversimplification, but the basics hold, I think.
On the other hand there is an all-powerful institution dedicated to taking my wealth every day and skimming from every purchase I make. This transfer of wealth is what concerns me because I have no say in it. I am unable to bargain or engage in common enterprise with it, or refuse its terms. It sets the rules and enforces them. And it is for this reason private wealth tries to curry favor with them, at everyone’s peril.
This is exactly backwards. It's the private wealth that is completely unaccountable and gives you no say in how it is used. If every service was privatised tomorrow, you'd be less able - not more, to refuse any terms. You can refuse any terms as much as you can refuse to have over your money to a robber with a gun - the freedom is there, just the consequence is obvious.
A lot of things "seem" to you this way and that, which is a nice way of saying you don't really know, and you're just making stuff up to suit your existing narrative of evil lefties out to destroy the world.
It seems like you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject of the debate. Am I wrong?
Because in your mind I'm a leftist, so I must be an unemployed guy living in his parent's basement with a Che Guevara T-Shirt, right?
No. I imagine you're a Russian chained up in a server farm somewhere - stirring shit in the west through divisive propaganda. Or worse, a well to do left wing academic!
For my part I'm content that I've brought my enormous knowledge to bear on this, and because you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject, it seems I've given you something to think about. Just generally though, one of the principal considerations in forming the magma energy plan for a sustainable future, has been discovering the least disruptive ways to achieve the goal. Because when things change rapidly and drastically, people suffer.
It seems like you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject of the debate. Am I wrong?
You're right. Mostly because this debate is a microcosm of debates about economic policy elsewhere. Very little knowledge, no talk about concrete proposals or specific effects. Just a lot of "seems" and "I reckon" coupled with some nicely simple metaphors.
It's a testament to the power of the current orthodoxy that we are unable to even properly talk about alternatives. It's like 1615, only our God is "the invisible hand of the market" and our doctrine is Neoliberalism.
I call it 'revolutionary change' only because the installed Uber-wealthy class might not be dislodged by a gradual, evolutionary process. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from major change.
I'm thinking about selling up and moving to Portland. What do you think? Buy a house there, start a business. Send my kids to school. I was hoping to get your advice.
Major industry develops that way. Someone has a working undeveloped technology with major potential. Investors give a group the money to start production, whether that be a cast-iron steam engine works, new steel plant, a transistor factory, or a large-scale battery storage farm--whatever it is. There is generally risk involved--that the investment might not pay off well, or worse, might not pay off at all. The Uber-wealthy are not risk takers. There is no need for them to take risks--they already have such a large share of the wealth. They can afford to be indifferent.
The wealthy cannot afford to be indifferent to climate change. And indeed, they're not. I read the communique from the G7 virtual summit on 20/21 May. Things are happening; they're moving on climate change. The only question is if they're making the right moves, and I'm arguing that their approach is sub optimal.
Little wonder, given that the left have so monopolised thinking on environmental issues, you actually have people believing there's a dead end ahead when in fact that's you, using environmental issues as an anti-capitalist battering ram that excludes thinking about realistic solutions. There are better answers than taxing people into poverty to save the world. It requires looking beyond the world as described by ideology, to a scientific understanding of reality; and I seek to assure the wealthy that putting the science out front does not preclude acting for profit, and very great profit too!
That is the distortion the disproportionate distribution of global wealth has. The few thousand people controlling 70% of world wealth starve innovation. Geo-thermal / H-power is just one more good idea languishing on the shelf.
The wealthy look at issues like climate change through an ideological lens first, and it's the art of the possible in those terms. That's why wind and solar are so obviously inadequate to the challenge, yet are popping up all over. They'll get kickbacks, and it won't hurt mining stocks, but that's just business. They'll create some skilled jobs, and take the edge off carbon emissions. It won't be enough, but the will is there.
Looking at things through a different lens first, a scientific lens, there's enormous untapped potential in magma energy. I believe resources are a function of the energy available to create them, and given sufficient energy we could balance human welfare and environmental sustainability, very much in our favour. We can get there from here, as we are, without turning the world upside down. And surely, that's to everyone's benefit.
According to Oxfam in 2020, the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, i.e. 60 percent of the world's population.
According to Statista, the wealth of US billionnaires grew by a trillion dollars since the start of the pandemic.
According to inequality.org, "US Billionaire wealth is twice the amount of wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of US households combined, roughly 160 million people."
According to americansfortaxfairness.org, "From 2010 to March 2020, more U.S. billionaires derived their wealth from finance and investments than any other industry. The financial sector boasted 104 billionaires in 2010 -- ten years later the number had grown to 160."
UBI amounts to a forced redistribution of capital from this tiny minority to everyone else. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I suspect that there aren't any billionnaires participating in this forum thread, so I am somewhat confused by the personal anxieties in this thread concerning the idea of UBI.
It's a testament to the power of the current orthodoxy that we are unable to even properly talk about alternatives. It's like 1615, only our God is "the invisible hand of the market" and our doctrine is Neoliberalism.
The invisible hand is a miracle. It's not a God, but it is a miracle. Imagine you are in command, over a command economy, and you want to make socks. First, you need to organise labour to plough the field, and the labour available gets paid whether the field is ploughed or not. Do you get where I'm coming from? The invisible hand distributes that decision making - by making it profitable to the individual, to foresee the need and plough the field, and plant the cotton - to sell to the sockmaker, who buys elastic from South America or something, brought here by a ships captain who thought, I know someone who would probably want to buy that. All these self interested economic decisions knit together miraculously, to produce and distribute what is needed and wanted. If you truly understand it, I think you have to recognise that's miraculous, particularly in relation to the alternative. The alternative is you will plough the field or I'll have you shot! I'd much rather get paid! Then I can go buy something from someone else, anticipating my needs!
UBI amounts to a forced redistribution of capital from this tiny minority to everyone else. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I suspect that there aren't any billionnaires participating in this forum thread, so I am somewhat confused by the personal anxieties in this thread concerning the idea of UBI.
Piketty argues that seeing it merely as "people voting against their interests" is mistaken. Every system is propped up by ideology as well. The ideas of the meritocracy, of the primacy of the market and perhaps above all the idea that there is simply no alternative to massive inequality are very pervasive.
The alternative is you will plough the field or I'll have you shot! I'd much rather get paid! Then I can go buy something from someone else, anticipating my needs!
Yes, that's the only alternative. Nothing but orthodoxy is possible. Everything else leads to hell. So recant your heresy and buy a coke, lest your soul be forfeit!
Piketty argues that seeing it merely as "people voting against their interests" is mistaken. Every system is propped up by ideology as well. The ideas of the meritocracy, of the primacy of the market and perhaps above all the idea that there is simply no alternative to massive inequality are very pervasive.
All I see here is an appeal to authority and abuse. You offer me no reason to continue an argument I consider, conclusively proven. Thanks for the chat.
All I see here is an appeal to authority and abuse. You offer me no reason to continue an argument I consider, conclusively proven. Thanks for the chat.
Your philosophical training was apparently insufficient to distinguish a reference from an appeal to authority.
But it is quite obvious that you have long since made up your mind.
Not much of an argument, I’m afraid, though I did put a comma where a period should have been.
This is exactly backwards. It's the private wealth that is completely unaccountable and gives you no say in how it is used. If every service was privatised tomorrow, you'd be less able - not more, to refuse any terms. You can refuse any terms as much as you can refuse to have over your money to a robber with a gun - the freedom is there, just the consequence is obvious.
I never wrote about having a say in how private health is used or accountability. I said I had no say in the transfer of my wealth to the government. So you not only have it backwards, you’re trying to mislead.
That’s true. Taxes and the spoils of taxes are ubiquitous. Those in power have confiscated the wealth from the citizenry since time immemorial and have spent it on things such as infrastructure and the like. But for me the benefits received from stolen money do not outweigh the moral costs.
If I do not pay my taxes I am subject to many penalties, up to and including jail time. If I do not pay a the federal or provincial sales tax on food I do not eat. If I do not pay property taxes I lose my home. Do you suppose I have a say in this?
If I do not pay my taxes I am subject to many penalties, up to and including jail time. If I do not pay a the federal or provincial sales tax on food I do not eat. If I do not pay property taxes I lose my home. Do you suppose I have a say in this?
Provided you live in a democracy, you do have a say. Merely that you do not get what you want is not the same as not having a say.
TonesInDeepFreezeMay 29, 2021 at 19:09#5439340 likes
Andrew Yang's proposal is for UBI to go to all and only 18-64 year olds. That makes no sense and is shockingly reactionary.
Bezos makes nearly 4k/SECOND. He gets UBI 1k/month.
An elderly person with total monthly income of only a few hundred dollars Social Security, or no Social Security at all, gets UBI 0/month. And bear in mind that Social Security is a retirement investment program to which the recipient contributed his or her entire working life.
But it's fair, because Bezos will get cut off when he turns 65, just like everyone else.
I'm thinking about selling up and moving to Portland. What do you think? Buy a house there, start a business. Send my kids to school. I was hoping to get your advice.
The transfer of my wealth to the state occurs at the point of every single purchase I make. In which of these transactions do I get a say?
Technically VAT is paid by the store, they just add it to the price. And indirect taxes like VAT are trash and ought to be abolished except for specific goals.
Anyways you don't get a say for every single tax payment. Nor did I claim or allude to that in any way. You do get a say in government policy though, which is more than you get for any wealth not held by the government.
I assume by “a say in government policy” you mean I get to tick a box next to someone’s name once every few years, the effect of which is slim to nothing. I do get a say in the private arena, however, by accepting or refusing the terms of their contracts. I, too, am a part of this arena after all. If I don’t like the offer I can find one elsewhere and they can do the same in a reciprocal fashion.
In any case, private actors are not taking my wealth without my consent. Only the state has that sort of unmitigated power.
TonesInDeepFreezeMay 30, 2021 at 01:10#5440930 likes
I checked one of Yang's website. It says anyone over 18. But in an interview on Freakonimics today, he said 18-64. But I re-listened by going to a posted sound file of the Freakomics episode, and realize now that when he said 18-64 was in January 2019. So his proposal has changed.
I do get a say in the private arena, however, by accepting or refusing the terms of their contracts. I, too, am a part of this arena after all. If I don’t like the offer I can find one elsewhere and they can do the same in a reciprocal fashion.
You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense you are not free to decline any offer, just as you're not free to not pay taxes or refuse someone with a gun to your head.
You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense you are not free to decline any offer, just as you're not free to not pay taxes or refuse someone with a gun to your head.
In the case of food and shelter, one can choose between a variety of options. If a loaf of bread is too expensive or too stale I can decline to purchase it and choose another. The fact that I must have food doesn’t mean that I must eat the first thing that’s offered to me, though that is probably not possible with the destitute and those trapped in command economies.
Then you must be quite wealthy. Lots of people are less lucky then you are and don't really have the option to think about their consent.
Well no, it’s just that I understand the basics of trade. Which private actors take your wealth without your consent, and how are they able to do it?
In the case of food and shelter, one can choose between a variety of options. If a loaf of bread is too expensive or too stale I can decline to purchase it and choose another.
Yes, you may have "options" but that doesn't make spending the money in any way optional.
Well no, it’s just that I understand the basics of trade. Which private actors take your wealth without your consent, and how are they able to do it?
The landlord, the train you take to work, the supermarket you get your basic foodstuffs from, whatever you have to pay for basic insurance. "Consent" here is purely a formality. The contracts are consensual only in a superficial way.
I am not persuaded. To me, willingly paying for goods and services are not the same as having my wealth coercively taken from at every transaction. If I refuse to buy from private hands I do not receive their service; if I refuse to buy from state hands I go to jail and have to pay anyways, and with interest. I fear the latter, not the former, and I am unable to see how one could say otherwise.
I am not persuaded. To me, willingly paying for goods and services are not the same as having my wealth coercively taken from at every transaction. If I refuse to buy from private hands I do not receive their service; if I refuse to buy from state hands I go to jail and have to pay anyways, and with interest. I fear the latter, not the former, and I am unable to see how one could say otherwise.
You always face consequences for your decisions. How much those impact you depends on your circumstances. If you're well off and live a sheltered enough life to think that you could easily "go it alone", having relatively minor burdens like taxation might feel like the greatest evil. If you work in some sweatshop which pays you barely enough to rent and feed your family, your view on choices will likely be different.
I don't understand how one can arbitrarily "fear" the state, but not extend that same fear to anything else that wields similar power. It strikes me as magical thinking, where the state is some big dragon with extraordinary powers, and if we could only slay it, the problem would disappear. In reality the state is simply the current form that social organisation has taken, and if it were to go away, all the same powers would simply move to some other body. It's simply not plausible to run a technological civilisation on the basis of ad-hoc agreements of individuals. If all states disappeared tomorrow, the first to reconstitute itself would easily rule the world, by the simple metric of being able to marshall power beyond any individual.
Theft, robbery and forced labor are evils the last time I checked. If it is true that the impact of these consequences depend on your circumstances, and not on morals or principle, then it seems the circumstances that favor this sort of relationship is one of servility and obedience to authority, and not much else.
I personally know some people, none of whom were well off, that were born stateless, born in anarchy, and happened to have parents who believed they could "go it alone". Indeed, they did go it alone for decades, their lives consisting of mostly surfing and fishing, but state enforcers burned their houses to the ground because the government wanted to expand a provincial park. So it's just untrue that a sheltered life begets disdain for state meddling, theft and taxation.
No one wields similar power to the state, is my point, and I still do not understand how one can conflate state power with anything else. Perhaps you can explain it because no one seems to be able to move beyond simply repeating it. The state has the monopoly on violence, with military and civilian enforcement at its beck and call. It can defend its interests from domestic and foreign threats with violent force, with little accountability. The only vague comparison I can make between state and private power are organizations of the criminal variety, like the mafia.
Maine? At once both the place to wish for and to be careful about what you wish for. csalisbury can be found there, try PMing him.
I recently moved from Portland to the (cheaper) foothill wilds of the north, but, if it is portland, maine, I'd be down to answer any questions about what it's like there (from my limited perspective)
If it is true that the impact of these consequences depend on your circumstances, and not on morals or principle, then it seems the circumstances that favor this sort of relationship is one of servility and obedience to authority, and not much else.
"People who like the state are servile and obedient". Yes, nice ad-hom.
I personally know some people, none of whom were well off, that were born stateless, born in anarchy, and happened to have parents who believed they could "go it alone". Indeed, they did go it alone for decades, their lives consisting of mostly surfing and fishing, but state enforcers burned their houses to the ground because the government wanted to expand a provincial park. So it's just untrue that a sheltered life begets disdain for state meddling, theft and taxation.
And they'd have died of a simple infection if there wasn't a society behind their idyll that they could rely on. I don't begrudge people who want to live alternative lifestyles like that one their place. In fact I think we can often learn a lot about what really matters from folks like these. But let's not kid ourselves into believing that a population of 11 Billion (projected) can live a similar lifestyle and survive very long.
No one wields similar power to the state, is my point, and I still do not understand how one can conflate state power with anything else.
That's because states exist, and they already have the power. No-one can take it because it's taken. But if it wasn't taken, it would be.
We can argue about how much power really large corporations have. It's not as visible in developed countries, but in e.g. south america going against the interests of some large corporation can be a death sentence, no state involved (though paid off to look the other way).
Perhaps you can explain it because no one seems to be able to move beyond simply repeating it. The state has the monopoly on violence, with military and civilian enforcement at its beck and call. It can defend its interests from domestic and foreign threats with violent force, with little accountability.
Very simply, the explanation for why the state has so much power is that more powerful states were more successful, mostly due to their improved ability to project force. A tribally organised people can deploy a vastly bigger proportion of their adult male population as fighters compared to some loosely organised bands. A kingdom still more. A centralized nation state even more. Once state centralisation started, the fiscal power of the state became paramount. China was a huge empire, but it only had tax revenues around 1-2% of GDP. At the same time, European nation states had several times that amount. That was still only a few percent, not enough to fund public schools or hospitals, but enough to finance armies to conquer the world.
The only really exception to this trend has been the invention of the social state, when states went from around 10% of GDP in tax revenue to above 40% not for war, but to finance a vast social state, which resulted in the most prosperous period of human history.
But, long story short, abandoning the state is a bit like turning all your swords into ploughs. Good idea, but it only works if everyone does it, or else you're going to have a really bad time once the other people with the swords show up. Dismantling the state would just mean someone else will take those powers, and there won't be centuries of custom and institutions limiting their usage of those powers.
Comments (136)
This works for any X less than the mean income. The median income is around half the mean, so we could easily guarantee that nobody ever gets less than what currently half of people make less than, and not only that bottom half but the next quarter would still come out ahead. All without printing a single new dollar.
Even if a UBI plan were instituted, higher taxation and all, some critical problems remain which would not be addressed.
1. Now more than ever, we need to make a very rapid transition from fossil fuel energy to solar / wind / hydro / nuclear. This involves a radical reorganization of the economy. If you think COVID-19 was disruptive, the very rapid (or even rapid) transition from fossil to renewable energy will be much more disruptive. Much of the world's wealth production is founded on fossil fuels, and it will take perhaps 30 to 50 years to complete the transition. Will we have enough national income to afford a UBI, or much else?
2. Current MANDATORY spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and DISCRETIONARY spending (Defense, Health, Education, Housing, etc.) required 4.4 trillion dollars in 2019, which amounts to 21% of GDP. Taxation produced $3.5 trillion dollars, 16.3% of GDP. [Congressional Budget Office figures].
So, deficit spending.
Reorganizing spending will be a very painful process. Retirement planning has relied on social security for... about 85 years. Medicare has been in place 55 years. That's just two examples of deeply integrated programs. Many other programs are equally integrated in our social expectations. Unwinding trillion dollar programs won't be a simple process.
Like I said, I'm generally in favor of UBI, but implementation has to account for other complicated programs.
BINGO!
The UBI is coming...and there will come a day when people will wonder why it took so long to get here.
My guess is the UBI will get here within the lifetime of people now alive...perhaps even during the lifetime of people who are now adults.
I'm 83...I won't see it. But I have been an advocate for the UBI for over three decades now.
It will come...and future people will look at us who now lack it...the way we look at people who thought it okay for grammar school kids to work 6 1/2 days a week digging coal in coal mines.
Do not wonder any longer.
IT WILL!
Likely it wouldn't ruin the dollar. A lot of that would be raise the aggregate demand, so what's the problem?
What basically universal income does is that the threshold to take a job increases. This is obvious even more clear with unemployment benefits. In a welfare state like mine one if paid unemployment benefits to perpetuity (as long as one lives) with the social welfare net paying your rent for a small apartment in the capital or a larger house in the countryside. What really can happen is that it alienates some people not to work, but at least they won't be beggars on the streets and homeless (which is a huge advantage, actually). The logic is quite reasonable: if you go to work at McDonalds, basically you are going to be left with a similar amount of money, but you have far less spare time to uhh.... discuss universal basic income in PF.
The American social safety net was hard won and not overly generous, but it has nonetheless long since been integrated in people's long-range plans.
Quoting Frank Apisa
73, here. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, either. I've been on UBI's bandwagon, more or less, for 30 years too, though from the perspective of socialism. It seems to me the "installed base" of safety net programs, tattered and full of holes as they are, will make a UBI difficult to achieve here (if for no other reason that the installed base will serve as an excuse for not doing).
That reason aside, I think UBI and the existing tattered net can be integrated together rather easily. Just make UBI-payments-minus-UBI-tax count as income for the purposes of determining income for those other programs. Gradually increase the UBI until those other programs wither away as nobody needs them anymore. Or if people who do need them start falling off of them too soon, adjust their income requirements appropriately to keep those people still on them, until UBI is raised enough that people who fall off of them due to UBI can afford to be off of them.
Tell everyone they'll get 25% of the mean income as a refundable tax credit, to offset a 25% tax on their income to fund an UBI. Make tax refunds paid out in monthly installments, and there you go: that tax credit is the UBI, of around $1000-something a month. Everyone below about the 75th percentile sees their taxes go down, and most of them get a monthly tax refund check, with absolutely destitute people getting such a check of over $1000/mo.
Or you could make it $2000, or $3000, or even about $4000, and the numbers still all work out the same. You just have to make the tax percentages 50%, 75%, or almost 100% to accomplish those numbers, which start to look less feasible. (I personally would aim for about a 50% target, but it's really negotiable).
Edit: without affecting people who own things for their own use, e.g. my ex-girlfriend's multi-generational family home in Santa Barbara that is now worth millions of dollars shouldn't be taxed out from under them, because other than owning that home they're not rich. I am very much in favor of people being secure in their ownership of things they actually use, and not having to keep paying the government for the continued right to keep them.
Regardless humans still need a sense of self worth. Most people struggle with that to some degree - hence the ‘bullshit jobs’ thread.
The religious bans on interest don't also ban rent, BTW, and both medieval Christians and modern Muslims get around it by a weird combination package of "interest-free" loans, insurance, and rent. The ancients seem not to have realized that interest is just a special case of rent, namely rent on money, and it's rent in general that needs banning (or rather, which needs to go unenforced; it's only enabled by legal contracts, and the law could just not recognize those contracts), not just rent on money.
Anyway, yeah you can't sell money, but you can spend it. If you can't profit from lending your money, you can spend it on something that you hope will generate more money, paying people to do things that you hope will generate profit. That still ends up transferring real wealth from the rich to the poor.
That's how "capitalism" is naively supposed to work: the rich pay the poor for their work, so the poor get richer and the richer get poorer, unless they're also working just as much. But because of rent and interest, most of what's paid to the poor just gets paid right back to the rich to borrow their wealth, wealth which does not become owned by the poor in exchange for that payment because it's only borrowed. It's rent and interest that break free markets and turn them into exploitative capitalism.
This effect is always mentioned and I have never ever seen research into it proving it.
Yes, and that's why in the UK, a lot of people think the poor are undeserving, idle and should be dispised. While we, the well off, are derserving, indeed entitled to feel superior, to have our wealth because we happened to be in a position to buy property (for example) in an area where house prices became vastly inflated and sold up and bought a number of buy to rent properties in less well off areas and charge extortionate rents from our poor tenants. We worked hard for our privelidge and sense of superiority.
I don’t agree, as many would paint it in a black and white manner, that people would simply turn to a life of sloth or turn to a life of personal growth.
Essentially we’d have leisure time and some would use it for recreational purposes (to literally ‘re-create’ themselves and hone skills etc.,.), but in reality I don’t think they’d be a huge difference in the problems people face and more than likely society would actively seek to deconstruct such economic harmony (meaning freedom of access to resources) to distract themselves from themselves. Some would likely work together, distinct ideas and cultures would flourish, and then these commitments would inevitably clash at some point as ‘resources’ would almost certainly become strained in some way for some period of time.
The stresses and strains of daily life is most certainly a welcome distraction for everyone to some degree. Having a goal, to get food on the table and pay bills, is a worthy achievement. Many are very happy to do just that and no more so if you took away their ability to look after themselves completely, they’d be forced into a situation where ‘leisure time’ or ‘recreation’ would be the mainstay of their existence. I’m not saying people cannot adapt to this only that they may find such circumstances far less palatable initially than they would otherwise have assumed - the cases of so-called ‘working class’ people winning the lottery eventually returning to their day job are quite clear examples of how expectations play out against reality. The ‘worth’ is often enough about people having a sense of ‘social worth’ and belonging to a group with a common history and understanding of the world.
Anyway, just scratching at the surface of where such could lead. In terms of a UBI I do think it is a good idea, but not a good idea for everyone. The instance of the virus now has shown the value of something like a UBI being a good idea for society. As a crisis management scheme it seems more than appropriate. In terms of the use of social institutes we can clearly see that reasonable safety nets prevent deaths.
One thing I am very much in favour of is FREE education. That is not to say I am against private education only that a stable and respected national system of education is a worthy goal (as far as I can see regardless of problems that may inevitably be associated with it).
Social success seems to be the main focus for juvenile individuals. Nothing wrong with that, but when this attitude is carried through into old age it upsets me. I feel bad for them. By this I mean the attitude that finding a partner, getting lots of money, and having a degree of social fame (within your group or on a media scale) have become mostly what people initially regard as ‘worth while’ and essential to ‘success’.
If UBI happens it will happen in Northern Europe first. I cannot honestly see any other countries even considering it, probably even actively opposing it, until it has been established for a few decades and with widespread economic success.
Without a degree of anarchism any UBI will likely fail. With UBI it seems obvious to me that each individual must take on a greater degree of personal responsibility rather than surrender their autonomy to a so-called ‘higher authority’ - basically freedom doesn’t come for free. Ignoring that would be disastrous.
The positive attitude towards welfare programs started early in the Nordic countries. I guess here it started with a huge land reform which was put actually through by the winners of the civil war, the whites, in 1918. That was the first sign that the classic liberalism (libertarianism) never was so close to heart even for the right-wing in Finland. The Nordic idea (typically referred to Sweden) of the Folkhemmet (the people's home) emerged at the start of the 20th Century and gained popularity especially in the 1920's.
The equivalent system to the American Social Security was launched in Finland in 1937 (two years after the US system). Unemployment benefits were started to be given in 1917. In the health care sector child health care centers were started first in the 1920's, the maternity packages were started to be given in 1930's and came to be given to all families with newborns from 1949. Universal Health Care started in it's present form I guess in the 1960's. I'd say basically Finland wanted to follow on the steps of Sweden, but WW2 made the plans to be implemented only in the 1960's as the country got more prosperous.
It is quite true. Long term unemployment creates social exclusion.
(from publication POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN FINLAND
IN THE 1990S, MINISTRY OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS AND HEALTH
HELSINKI 1999)
Of course, not having any such system creates likely even more and worse problems.
Why don’t you give them your money, then?
In the end the experiment was rather inconclusive and basically viewed as a failure by some. Why it was only unemployed in the experiment makes it by my reasoning strange if the idea is really universal basic income.
"Earn" is one of those ambiguous words with many different meanings. Equivocation between those distinct meanings may make your statement true. But then the labourer might earn a wage in one sense of the word, the investor might earn a profit in another sense of the word, and even the thief might earn, in the sense of deserve the money stolen in retribution. Anyway, you should see that "income is never unearned" requires equivocation between distinct senses of "earn". And if you restrict "earn" to legal ventures, and "income" to legally sourced money, you have a useless statement which cannot even be called a tautology because it doesn't represent any reality.
As I have mentioned several times...these days, one should be able to EARN one's living by simply staying out of the way.
There are people who do more for productivity by just going home. There are bosses, fellow workers, and underlings who fall into that category. Is there anyone here who can say they do not know of someone who would have helped the productivity of a particular company...by just disappearing?
So...if we recognize that some people are only taking up space for another person or a machine that could increase productivity...that person should be paid to stay out of the way. All he/she is doing is what must be done...trying to EARN a living. Let's be real about it...and pay them to stay away. The alternative is to let them starve to death...or to hurt productivity...both of which make a lot less sense than paying them to stay away.
OK, but when we pay the bosses to disappear they might want more money than the underlings we pay to disappear. Can we make the bosses take a cut in pay, or do they disappear with a large salary?
Anyone who cannot be more productive than another human...or a machine, robot, or computer...
...should take up the job of "stay out of the way" specialist.
They should all get paid the same.
If a guy is a "boss" who cannot do the job as well as someone or something else...he can downsize until he fits in a niche where he can be more productive. (The opposite end of the Peter Principle ladder.)
The people who actually can be productive and who do the work...should make really decent bucks. Much more than the SOOTW specialists.
You’re right. It was an ambiguous statement, and a drunken one at that. What I mean is a wage, an income, money, doesn’t just fall out of the sky. It has to be “earned” or otherwise acquired through some form of work or effort or planning.
Money itself is just a means to an end...and the "end" is "the distribution" of what people need and want.
Accumulating money is one of the basest ways of saying "my dick is bigger than your dick." (Yeah, yanking dicks out and actually comparing is not as base.)
We can simply invent a different, more efficient, way of distribution...especially since so much of the work to obtain the stuff we need and want is done by machines.
“Gaining money” and using it how one chooses is one thing; taking and distributing that money to others is quite another. The former is just; the latter is unjust.
As for the argument that we should institute a UBI because jobs are becoming automated, the same fears have gripped workers throughout history whenever new innovations threatened industries. In each case there has been no reason to have a UBI.
Okay...stick with that.
At one point in our history, there were people who stuck with the notion that kids should be put to work in coal mines...and work 10 - 12 hours days 5 1/2 days a week.
Those opinions are allowed.
It's a good idea to pump money into the bottom of the economy, because money creates value as it spirals upward, however, I think a significant increase in minimum wage, with tax breaks for companies paying it, is a better approach than a Universal Basic Income - because value would still be derived for what is effectively a giveaway, but a giveaway that doesn't point a giant spotlight at quantitative easing. In this way, I think you can maintain all the natural capitalist incentives and avoid many of the inflationary effects on prices and wages of giving away free cash.
Two other considerations are giving away free money will always draw a crowd, so you'll immediately have increased immigration. (Or, you can attract businesses with low tax rates - even if this cancels out with high minimum wages.)
Also, you open the door to Communism. To ensure people are not claiming UBI in all 50 states of the Union, you'd have to means test it in the sense you'd need to know who had claimed. It would require a massive invasive bureaucracy to give away free cash - which is just a hop, skip and a slump from Communism.
Obviously not. I could point out that this person is starving and ask you to recognize that you have some obligation to help that person out, or I could get off my high horse and help them out myself. But what I would not be entitled to do is mug you for the starving person's sake.
Yet that's what the state does. It's unjust.
Unless it is those who created the problem who are being taxed to pay for it - parents, that is. But why should I be made to pay for the bad luck or fecklessness of your offspring? It is unjust to make me pay for the education of your offspring, or to provide a safety net for them should they make bad choices or be unlucky enough to have no marketable skills, or pay to have them policed and governed.
So by all means let's have a universal basic income - I agree that all innocent persons are entitled to lives of dignity free from the oppression of having to work - but for christ's sake make sure the right people pay for it. Tax the polluters: the breeders. Pay the cost - the full cost - of your silly and self-indulgent and immoral decision. Those of us who have had the good sense and moral insight not to subject others to a life of ignorance in a dangerous world full of random hazards and depraved people and in which you have to work or starve, should not pay a penny.
Why would you need to give companies a tax break for paying the minimum wage? Wages are always deducted from taxable profit anyways.
Quoting counterpunch
Assuming you pay the UBI to non-citizens, which seems unlikely.
Quoting counterpunch
I don't think you need any kind of massive bureaucracy. That's kind of the advantage of an universal basic income. You can just add it to the taxable income of anyone who claims it. Since people already have to declare their income (and usually the employer transmits that information to the tax authorities automatically), it'd not create any new difficulties.
The notion that people should be allowed to keep their income and wealth secret from the state is dubious anyways.
Except, the state doesn't do that, the state has democratic legitimacy and the state is the institution establishing property as a right in the first place.
Government is perfectly entitled to tax as it sees fit, and to set minimum wages as it sees fit. Why reinvent the wheel?
You aren't mugged. That's just nonsense. If you have a contract that entitles you to an income, that income is already subject to taxes. The same is true for wealth which you acquire under the express protection of the state. None of these things is somehow naturally assigned to you in full and without obligation.
Yeah that's my question. An additional tax break seems like double dipping for the company.
How so?
Corporate taxes are on profit, not turnover. So if you pay higher wages, you already pay less taxes.
It is unjust. Voting on it won't make it just. And there is no contract. I will be taxed on a transaction whether or not I agree to it.
"salaries, wages, commissions, and bonuses you have paid to the employees of your small business are tax-deductible expenses if they are deemed to be: Ordinary and necessary, and reasonable in amount."
If a company unilaterally decided to raise the minimum wage of its employees - maybe that wouldn't be deemed ordinary, necessary and reasonable in amount. But if government did so, it is by legal definition ordinary, necessary and reasonable.
That doesn't mean you somehow have a right not to be taxed.
Yes, because it's the least bad system. And we have to have a system, because there are lots of us in a small space.
"It's like mugging because it kinda looks like it if you ignore all context" is not a convincing argument to that effect though.
My system is better. Make the polluters pay. That is, make make parents pay. They have violated rights and owe their offspring a living and others protection from their offspring. That debt can rightfully be collected. Thus taxing parents so that they pay for the problems they have created is just. Taxing others is not - it is extracting money with menaces, and that's wrong unless the money is owed.
OK, so a dictatorship with these values. What if the dictator changes her mind?
Thanks a ton! Although my posts in this thread are all from a year ago.
So you can urinate in the river as much as you like because you don't have relatives downstream?
Now, would it magically become okay if you put the matter to a vote - shall I mug bartricks and give the proceeds to this person who has less than Bartricks?
No. Obviously.
Bert reasons: oh, so, er, you're now in favour of a dictatorship!!
No, Berty. It would also be wrong if a dictator decides to mug me and give the proceeds to a person who has less.
What you don't seem to understand is that our rights - the basic moral rights that a state, if it has any justification at all, is supposed to protect - are not a function of votes. You don't have a right to life and a right to non-interference because someone voted on it.
This isn't about democracy versus dictatorship. This is about what the state is entitled to do.
Let's say you need an organ. YOu'll die unless you get it. I have a spare one inside me. Are you entitled to cut me open and take it? No, obviously not. Can you hire someone else to do it on your behalf? No, obviously not.
You may ask me to give it to you. Perhaps I ought to give it to you - not denying that - but still, it's not something you're entitled to take without my consent.
And by extension, someone else is not entitled to take it out of me without my consent and give it to you. Right?
Likewise, if I have some spare money and you need it, you have to ask for it and rely on my generosity or the generosity of others, not just take it from me. And by extension, if someone else decides to take it off me and give it to you, then they have wronged me as much as you would have done if you'd done so.
Simple and obvious stuff.
What if I'm responsible for you needing the organ in question? What if I voluntarily did something to you without your consent that resulted in you needing an organ? Well, now it's plausible that I owe you the organ and that this is a debt that can be paid with force if necessary. So 'now' you may - plausibly - take the organ from me even if I do not wish to give it to you. And by extension, others may do it on your behalf.
Hence why it is parents - who, by their voluntary procreative decisions knowingly burden others with a lifetime of work among other things - owe those they create a living, a living that can be extracted by force if necessary. THus parents can justly be taxed to provide everyone (bar themselves, of course) with a minimum income. (More than minimum, incidentally - enough to live on with dignity).
But those of us who have been decent enough not to do that to others should not pay a penny. Not until or unless we start violating the rights of others.
Quoting Bartricks
Up yours! I'm describing Riparian Rights - as a metaphor for intergenerational environmental responsibilities. Google it igno!
A stream flows in one direction - like time. If you pollute the river upstream, you are impinging on the rights those downstream. If you pollute the planet now - if effects subsequent generations. Riparian Rights asserts the rights of those downstream to enjoy the same rights as those upstream.
By asserting that you don't have to pay tax on pollution because you have no offspring, is essentially saying that you can piss in the river upstream, because you don't have relatives downstream. But there are still people downstream - forced to drink your piss. The fact they are not related to you is neither here nor there, is it?
I marvel at your inability to grasp the concept of Riparian Rights. Personally, I think taxation is not the right way to address this problem. It's the blunt tool of choice, but for me - I'd harness limitless magma heat energy, and extract carbon from the atmosphere.
The only reason any of us have a carbon footprint is because we still use fossil fuels - when all the clean energy we could ever need, and more - is right there beneath our feet.
Taxation reduces demand - for the poor. The rich don't give a shit; carry on as they are, while poor people are dying of hypothermia because they can't afford fuel. I cannot understand how the left can advocate such a policy approach; while weeping buckets about equality.
It's fucked up, but your objections are still misconceived. The fact you don't have kids is irrelevant to your responsibility to leave behind a liveable planet. And treating people as pollution is doubly fucked up. Fossil fuels are the polluter, and there is an alternative, more than adequate to replace them entirely.
IF you've had kids, then you owe them a living. They don't have to earn it. You owe them it. I mean, you knowingly brought them into a dangerous world in which you have to work or die, other things being equal. That was wicked, and you owe them a living. (And you owe them protection from all the depraved monsters that live here). You owe them the lot: a good, dignified life, whatever it costs.
It is the basic intuition behind the idea of the universal basic income: we're all entitled - entitled - to a good life (until we behave like arseholes, of course). The world won't just provide it to us though. Not without us doing things. But we - we who have been bred but have not bred - are not the ones who owe it to ourselves to do those things, for our being here was in no way something we did to ourselves. It was what others did to us. So they ought to do what's necessary - they ought to work to provide us with the dignified living that we deserve (deserve, that is, until we make the same immoral decision they made and decide to breed). And if they don't, they can be forced: forced by the system, through taxation.
The state has, for many people, become the parent. But it is our parents who owe us livings. Not just all other people. Our parents specifically. I don't owe you a living, for example. Why on earth would I?
But most parents, by their very nature, don't do much planning and aren't particularly intelligent (for having kids is, as well as immoral, unbelievably stupid). And thus most parents can't afford it. So tax all of them. Make them all pay into a common pot - and tax them what it takes - and use taht common pot to provide the rest of us with the guaranteed income we're all entitled to (those of us who have not bred, of course).
It makes sense, you just don't like it.
With all due respect, who cares what you think you're entitled to. In a state of nature you'd be driven from the tribe for refusing to reciprocate, and die torn apart by wild dogs. Your adolescent "I didn't ask to be born" antinatalist caterwauling - in no way entitles you to a good life. Reciprocation is the basis of civilisation. Make yourself useful - live up to your responsibilities, or bog off and die.
Because it is not just what I am entitled to, but what everyone who has been bred but hasn't bred is entitled to. And I am showing it by reasoned argument. So, you can not care, but if you're reasonable you will.
And now, rather than address the argument, you engage in witless insults. The world needs more of you.
Not at all. I'm describing life in a state of nature in the hope you might understand that your imagined values are civilisation dependent, such that you might recognise the hypocrisy of claiming you have no responsibility to that civilisation.
Let me explain: when someone says "parents should pay all the taxes" and you reply "bog off and die" then you are being rude. Now, if the claim that "parents should pay all the taxes" really angers you and you think it is outrageous because you're a parent and it's all fuzzy in your head but the nasty reasoning man is saying things that seem to imply you're not a great person, that still doesn't make my claim an insult. It's a theory. And I can defend it to the hilt and will to all comers. And all comers will, like you, get angry and insult me and think that I was somehow insulting them, even though all I was doing was making arguments that show them to be unreasonable people with tempers. Of course, once you insult me I'll insult you back a lot better, but that's reciprocity and it is the basis of all civilization, isn't it?
I suggest you now resist the temptation to go on about me and try instead to address the philosophical case that I made for parents being the ones who owe the rest of us a guaranteed income.
Again with the outrage.
Quoting counterpunch
You think I didn't make a reasoned case? Do you know the meaning of the words you are using. You seriously think I didn't make a case??
That's because the left you are talking about are not the left they were 40 years ago. Taxation can absolutely work to combat inequality, and has done so after WW2. But the last 40 years we have seen a consistent process of making the taxes less progressive (in some cases, like the US, taxes have become effectively regressive) while trying to sustain roughly similar social programs. The result is that the burden of these programs falls more and more on the middle class, which consequentially is breaking apart under the strain.
International agreements all enshrine the free movement of capital and goods, but contain no provisions for the cross-border taxation of profits and wealth. The result is that states are less and less able - and due to increasing interstate competition also less and less willing - to tax the wealthy. The resulting alienation of the least privileged classes leads to increasing identitarian conflict and isolationist sentiment. See e.g. Brexit and Trump, but also the likes of Orban and Le Pen. Meanwhile, all the center left has to offer is statements of soildarity and a focus on identitarian conflicts of a different type, while offering no alternative economic vision.
You construe people as pollution, but in fact no-one need have a carbon footprint. We don't have to use fossil fuels.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm not confused. You are. We could harness limitless amounts of clean energy from magma; and live sustainably and well long into the future. Consequently, people are not pollution, and over-population is not the problem. The problem is the mis-application of technology. Given an application of technologies in relation to a scientific understanding of reality (assuming only that we wish to survive) the earth could easily support the 10-12bn people projected by 2100 - sustainably and profitably.
It all goes back to Malthus - and his Essay on Population 1770 ish - that predicted population would outstrip food supply and there would be mass starvation. He was wrong; human beings invented tractors and fertilizers - and have out-produced need and population growth through technological innovation. We can continue to do so. Nonetheless, Malthus ideas continue to inform the "pay more-have less, tax this-stop that" left wing anti-capitalist green approach to sustainability. And it's in those terms you construe people as pollution. Your disincentivisation of reproduction through taxation would be hugely counter productive - re: aging populations, in a sustainable future based on magma energy. I felt forced to counter this attitude.
I'm not a corporate tax expert. I am aware of the perception that large companies don't pay a fair share, but I don't know how true that is. I secretly suspect they can just as justifiably claim to be over taxed as the middle class; but that doesn't fit with a jealous left wing narrative. Philosophically, I always consider Bill Gates - and imagine him in his shed, or whatever, noodling away at his computer, trying to invent windows - about to unleash an enormous wave of value, and I cannot be jealous of his success - such that I demand he be taxed to death in every country, state and townsville that has wifi.
Oh the middle class isn't growing right now, but it was essentially invented in the mid 20th century, a period of high tax rates.
Quoting counterpunch
Yeah, I understand the concern. Unfortunately it's hard to make conclusive statements on this without large scale experimentation. Which is to say we'd need a major economy - something the size of France, Germany or the UK at least - to actually implement an UBI to have any real chance of getting a good idea of the effects. UBI isn't uncontroversial even on the left. It should be noted, however, that basic income - that is some form of welfare to keep you alive - doesn't seem to have destroyed people's willingness to work.
Quoting counterpunch
This sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance. It's easy enough to find accounts of how corporate tax avoidance works, and what kind of results this has - Amazon paid 0 federal income tax in 2018 and 2019 thanks to a clever licensing scheme, for example.
Of course not all companies are the same. It's mostly large, multinational corporations that have access to all the tricks.
Quoting counterpunch
I don't really see why asking for high taxes on rich people is a sign of jealousy. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a principle of solidarity, not jealousy. Would it have been unfair to tax Bill Gates' 10th or 100th million earned at 70%, or 80 or 90? I think a few tens of millions is enough for anyone, does that make me jealous?
That sounds like ideologically motivated ignorance to me. Ha ha. I've offered my inexpert opinion Echarmion. I am more naturally inclined toward approaches that raise the floor, rather than pull down the ceiling. It's like some Far Side cartoon - two stalls, one says 'free money' and has an enormous queue, and the other says "a fair days pay for a fair days work" - and no-one's interested. Tempting offer... but if there are less drastic means to have much the same effect, then what's the real purpose of UBI? Is it in fact, primarily - a political statement?
Quoting Echarmion
So too are all the people at the free money booth in solidarity, but they're not there because they love each other. I don't think solidarity moves people like rational self interest, and offering free money appeals to rational self interest even while being a footbridge to communism.
Either you're a girl or your wife/girlfriend/mom is really bossy.
Well that's essentially what I mean by ideologically motivated ignorance. It wasn't intended as a personal insult. I have my own ideologically motivated ignorance. I just wanted to point out that you seem less inclined to look into something which might be in contradiction to your existing views.
Quoting counterpunch
Metaphors are all fine and good, but it's too easy to just brush the question aside with a smirk. Rising inequality is a real problem, and one that directly impacts your stated aim of providing everyone with cheap and clean energy.
Quoting counterpunch
Of course different people have different purposes in mind when they make a proposal. But are there less drastic measures that do the same thing? The people affected by UBI are not the same as the people affected by a minimum wage increase.
Quoting counterpunch
You're changing the subject.
Quoting counterpunch
That's a false dichotomy. Solidarity is part of a "rational self interest". Of course when people talk about "rational self interest", they rarely take these words at their usual meaning, and instead refer to some kind of purely commercial cost-benefit analysis.
As to the "footbridge to communism" part, please imagine me rolling my eyes theatrically. The countries of western Europe have by and large been giving out "free money" to people for more than 70 years, and communism is farther away than ever.
:) I grew up in 1980s Britain. Thatcher was everyone's bossy mum back then.
Agreed!
Not magically, but democratically, well, yes, unfortunately. I'd disagree, but that's just tough for me, as democracy is the least bad way of deciding things.
Not obviously. We're talking about practical rules, not my personal views.
Well, you're not in favour of voting to decide what is socially acceptable.
I agree.
That is exactly why I have a right to life. In 1998 the UK formally adopted the ECHR and enacted the Human Rights Act 1998.
It depends on what the law is in the jurisdiction in question. These are legal matters.
These are legal matters. To influence the law according to my values, I can vote in a democracy.
Rights only make sense to me in a legal context. Again, these are all legal matters.
Metaphors are fantastic, aren't they? They're like similes in play form. I'm trying to think of one that demonstrates that inequality is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. There's always the brain surgeon/ road-sweeper analogy. Why disincentivise further, making the extraordinary effort necessary to become a brain surgeon? Don't we already have enough road-sweepers? I don't look down on roadsweepers. I was an industrial cleaner in the construction industry for the longest time. I'm very familiar with a brush and shovel, but I made the effort to become a philosopher. Bit of a mistake really. I'm a great cook too. I could have been a celebrity chef, but I went for the philosophy. Ho hum! But as we're here, I flatter myself I know a thing or too and can assure you nothing's been brushed aside with a smirk. I'm just witty!
My view is that inequality isn't a problem if the poorest have enough, and effectively limitless clean energy from magma can do that sustainably. Capitalism can be sustained, which is fortunate because communism has failed quite badly quite often, only recently! Something you seem to brush aside easily!
Quoting Echarmion
That's true. It would be people like me as an industrial cleaner, who would be able to afford to keep a roof above their head, and would pay the landlord rent, who would go out and buy a car. Call it the trickle up theory of economics. Note that at every juncture the right motives are promoted in accord with the rational self interest of the individual, and to the benefit of society. I think the left are better pushing on a living wage than trying to sneak communism in by the back door, by handing out a big bag full of someone else's cash!
I have pointed out elsewhere that inequality is not simply "different outcomes". But regardless, the problem isn't that some theoretical amount of inequality might perhaps be good. It's that the current amount of inequality is bad.
Quoting counterpunch
Just be careful not to forget actually involving the poor in your calculation of what's "enough", because they won't just sit around watching you build your utopia if they're fed only the scraps.
Quoting counterpunch
The proof on that is still out, I'd say. It has collapsed once before (into two world wars).
Quoting counterpunch
I'd personally he happy with the left getting any kind of political momentum going somewhere, but for the time being, they appear gridlocked most anywhere.
As for handing out others people's cash: it's very important that we start doing it, because right now it's much too concentrated.
In what sense bad? If you're saying it's bad because the poorest don't have enough, then your argument has my sympathies. What can be done? How about increasing minimum wage? But if your argument is that inequality is bad because some people have pot-loads, I don't agree. Large concentrations of capital are necessary to an economy - in ways I don't pretend to understand.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm trying to think of ways we can carry on much as we are, and suggest an approach I think means things would get better over time as wealth trickled up through the economy and magma energy opened up the way to a far more prosperous sustainable future. I think all legitimate interests can be reconciled - insofar as magma hydrogen would not need to compete with existing fossil fuel technologies right away, and so infrastructure costs could be divided from environmental benefits - gained by extracting carbon directly from the atmosphere. Tackling the problem from the supply side does not imply authoritarian government imposing poverty on people forever after. If not wanting equality of poverty is utopian; if wanting genuine sustainability is utopian, then I'm utopian, but not unrealistically so.
Certainly, robust economies require capital to function properly. The problem with 'concentrated capital' is that too few agents control it, and may apply it towards unproductive ends such as furthering the concentration. That is precisely what has happened in the global economy. A tiny number of Uber-wealthy individuals control a very large percentage (50%+) of capital. (How tiny? It numbers in the dozens.). It doesn't matter, in some ways, whether it is a few dozen super-rich individuals or a government. A soviet-style monopoly of wealth is as counterproductive as a yacht full of gold plated parasites.
Highly concentrated wealth deprives a few million (out of 8 billion) individuals from fielding and developing new ideas. Your geo-thermal/hydrogen idea will probably remain undeveloped for lack of capital.
There will probably always be poor people, because "poor" is relative, A man with $1,000,000 is poor among multi-billionaires. A third-world family with enough to eat and a roof over their heads is poor among affluent first-worlders. I don't know how to define "absolute" (non-relative) poverty. Starvation, unsheltered exposure to the weather, and lack of somewhat clean water to slake one's thirst would probably qualify as "absolute poverty", but that doesn't help someone with zero cash living in an urban homeless shelter and being fed slop twice a day.
It is desirable to have wealth vigorously percolate up the economy (rather than a glacially slow trickle-down), but getting the wealth to the base so it can percolate up requires a revolutionary change in the way wealth is controlled. I don't see that on the horizon.
It's genuinely baffling to see someone so confidently make an argument from ignorance.
Quoting counterpunch
It's bad because it damages social cohesion, in ways that are already quite obvious. You cannot expect people to not notice that their real income doesn't go up, while the stock market breaks record after record and managers in large companies get millions of dollars in bonuses even if they fail. You can't expect people to not notice that lots of new flats are being build, but they are build for international investors who buy them and sometimes don't even rent them out, on the grounds that the value of real estate increases so quickly that it's better to leave them empty. In order for people to work together in a society, they need to actually feel that there is a minimum level of justice involved. Else they turn to one extremist or the other. Europe has been there before.
Quoting counterpunch
But the supply still does need to be build first, and then the question of who decides how the supply is handled needs to be answered. Not everyone will own their own geothermal plant. I imagine you don't want one giant profit-driven conglomerate to own all the new power plants, and for good reason.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Certainly not while people fervently defend the right of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to be arbitrarily rich on the basis that any kind of redistribution is born from jealousy and leads to communism. It also doesn't help that very few people are aware of the economic history of the last century in their own country, let alone the world.
You've questioned the veracity of scope of my knowledge base and I've admitted my limitations. Now you're baffled? Surely not!
Quoting Echarmion
If there's anyone here putting a strain on social cohesion, I'd argue - that's you. Indeed, it seems to me that the left's standard strategy is to point out things that strain social cohesion and exploit the resulting discontent. Thing is it doesn't matter to me that large concentrations of capital stand as surety for insurance and pensions and goodness knows what? What matters to me is that I've something to do I'm capable of doing, that justifies my existence, and keeps the wolf from the door. But then I don't suppose you'd understand the pride there is in coming home, covered in dirt, having performed heroic labours, and slapping an envelope down on the kitchen table.
Quoting Echarmion
Building the magma energy infrastructure would require political agreement in the first instance, but also, backing with significant amounts of capital. Were it the fossil fuel industry's capital, for example, they would be in a position to help determine how magma energy were applied - and that might be sufficient to earn their cooperation in what would ultimately be a transition. The problem is disorderly divestment. Magma energy would give us time to transition.
Quoting Echarmion
Were it Jeff Bezos' money, or Bill Gates money I imagine an LNG tanker full of liquid hydrogen fuel emblazoned with their logo - pulling into harbour within ten years. That's an economic future I could live with; given an economic history I'm very well aware of from a political perspective, thank you, even if corporate taxation is a huge and complex specialty I'm not overly familiar with. My apologies if you're still baffled, but I don't consider it utopian, or even unlikely. It is out of the box thinking in a very real sense; but then the most probable course doesn't lead anywhere good, and so arguably, the answer would initially appear improbable. My concern is to show that it's possible.
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's my point though, I don't think it does require revolutionary change. UBI is revolutionary, but governments already have the tools in the form of minimum wage legislation and business taxes, and no-one could look askance upon government setting those to achieve a trickle up effect. How vigorous a percolation that could be would depend on things like inflationary pressures - and would that be such a bad thing with interest rates close to zero? I don't know. My concern is that the subsequent economic growth would be sustainable - and because I think it could be, an anti-capitalist, neo communist approach to sustainability is not necessary, and indeed, would be counter productive in a sustainable future.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Echmarion is a handful, but note how the competition has driven me to surpass myself! Imagine I succeeded; I think this is unlikely, but imagine I was given the money to develop this technology myself, and hired people and scoped locations, and built facilities, and started delivering boat loads of sustainability, would you resent me my success? Because I wouldn't resent someone else developing these ideas, (and I think that more likely), nor resent them the rewards of having risked their capital and applied their minds. I'm a philosopher, not a politician or a businessman. I'd still be a philosopher if I had to live in a clay pot in the market square!
Quoting counterpunch
Major industry develops that way. Someone has a working undeveloped technology with major potential. Investors give a group the money to start production, whether that be a cast-iron steam engine works, new steel plant, a transistor factory, or a large-scale battery storage farm--whatever it is. There is generally risk involved--that the investment might not pay off well, or worse, might not pay off at all. The Uber-wealthy are not risk takers. There is no need for them to take risks--they already have such a large share of the wealth. They can afford to be indifferent.
That is the distortion the disproportionate distribution of global wealth has. The few thousand people controlling 70% of world wealth starve innovation.
Geo-thermal / H-power is just one more good idea languishing on the shelf.
Quoting counterpunch
The same to you.
Or even not, everyone gets more, so I will charge more. Because someone else somewhere up the line will do the same, for what I need, and now it costs me more.
There is little difference between UBI and just marking up the current currency to be twice it's value. It will cost me twice as much, so I will charge twice as much. Just keeps the poor poorer and the rich richer.
There's more room for inequality if I have to pay $250 for a weeks worth of groceries instead of 25 cents, like it used to be (slight exaggeration). Honestly the only blame is the criminals and counterfeiters. It's more about open education, rather lack of mandated raising of children. People steal, people pay for it. Not the people who steal of course. And enter law enforcement. Who need to be paid as well. Criminals. We all know one. But no one wants to do anything about it. And so the cycle will continue. Or will it?
I don't know either, but I do know that historically (going back a long way--even the Romans) inflation has been a problem. True, interest rates are low right now, despite big cash infusions into the economy. That could change pretty quickly. During the inflation spike in the 1980s, banks were paying up to 15% on savings (for a few months--a splendid rate if one happened to have cash under the mattress). They managed to get that under control, so that the top savings rates were more like 7% in 2006. The big crash in inflated investment values happened in 2008. Since then, interest rates have been low.
One of the reasons Economics is the Dismal Science is that economists rarely (or is it never?) see disaster coming.
How is it exactly that concentrated wealth deprives a few million individuals from fielding and developing new ideas? I ask because if I see concentrated wealth or capital I see an opportunity, so long as it isn’t in state hands.
The extremely concentrated wealth isn't invested in production; it is generally invested in paper speculation -- derivatives, currencies... stuff like that. Some of the Uber-wealthy made a lot of money in the sphere of actual goods and services, but once the piles are sufficiently large, it tends to be shifted into the less productive stuff.
I'm not suggesting you buy Thomas Piketty's books; but check out an article or two about him. At least, that's the way I understand it.
BTW, you are over-estimating the harm of money in state hands and under-estimating the harm of money in private hands.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll take a look.
Maybe I do underestimate the harm of private money. That’s why I’m wondering why I should believe I am deprived wherever wealth or capital is concentrated. I see opportunity in private concentrations of wealth and capital. It’s approachable, reasonable, and ultimately, through varying degrees of effort, accessible, I can provide services, seek employment, investment or opportunity. This is an obvious oversimplification, but the basics hold, I think. If the terms are not to my liking I can refuse them. Nothing leaves my pocket that I have not willingly given them. So I have trouble seeing what it is that deprives me of anything.
On the other hand there is an all-powerful institution dedicated to taking my wealth every day and skimming from every purchase I make. This transfer of wealth is what concerns me because I have no say in it. I am unable to bargain or engage in common enterprise with it, or refuse its terms. It sets the rules and enforces them. And it is for this reason private wealth tries to curry favor with them, at everyone’s peril.
Anyways I’m just trying to understand the fear.
The problem is you're basing your views on your ignorance.
Quoting counterpunch
A lot of things "seem" to you this way and that, which is a nice way of saying you don't really know, and you're just making stuff up to suit your existing narrative of evil lefties out to destroy the world.
Quoting counterpunch
Because in your mind I'm a leftist, so I must be an unemployed guy living in his parent's basement with a Che Guevara T-Shirt, right?
Quoting Outlander
What country has open borders and free immigration?
Quoting NOS4A2
What it is is obvious word-salad.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is exactly backwards. It's the private wealth that is completely unaccountable and gives you no say in how it is used. If every service was privatised tomorrow, you'd be less able - not more, to refuse any terms. You can refuse any terms as much as you can refuse to have over your money to a robber with a gun - the freedom is there, just the consequence is obvious.
I'm declining to speak on subjects I don't know much about, precisely because I don't base my views in ignorance.
Quoting Echarmion
It seems like you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject of the debate. Am I wrong?
Quoting Echarmion
No. I imagine you're a Russian chained up in a server farm somewhere - stirring shit in the west through divisive propaganda. Or worse, a well to do left wing academic!
For my part I'm content that I've brought my enormous knowledge to bear on this, and because you're talking about the debate, rather than the subject, it seems I've given you something to think about. Just generally though, one of the principal considerations in forming the magma energy plan for a sustainable future, has been discovering the least disruptive ways to achieve the goal. Because when things change rapidly and drastically, people suffer.
Oh yeah, that's an even better story.
Quoting counterpunch
You're right. Mostly because this debate is a microcosm of debates about economic policy elsewhere. Very little knowledge, no talk about concrete proposals or specific effects. Just a lot of "seems" and "I reckon" coupled with some nicely simple metaphors.
It's a testament to the power of the current orthodoxy that we are unable to even properly talk about alternatives. It's like 1615, only our God is "the invisible hand of the market" and our doctrine is Neoliberalism.
I'm thinking about selling up and moving to Portland. What do you think? Buy a house there, start a business. Send my kids to school. I was hoping to get your advice.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The wealthy cannot afford to be indifferent to climate change. And indeed, they're not. I read the communique from the G7 virtual summit on 20/21 May. Things are happening; they're moving on climate change. The only question is if they're making the right moves, and I'm arguing that their approach is sub optimal.
Little wonder, given that the left have so monopolised thinking on environmental issues, you actually have people believing there's a dead end ahead when in fact that's you, using environmental issues as an anti-capitalist battering ram that excludes thinking about realistic solutions. There are better answers than taxing people into poverty to save the world. It requires looking beyond the world as described by ideology, to a scientific understanding of reality; and I seek to assure the wealthy that putting the science out front does not preclude acting for profit, and very great profit too!
Quoting Bitter Crank
The wealthy look at issues like climate change through an ideological lens first, and it's the art of the possible in those terms. That's why wind and solar are so obviously inadequate to the challenge, yet are popping up all over. They'll get kickbacks, and it won't hurt mining stocks, but that's just business. They'll create some skilled jobs, and take the edge off carbon emissions. It won't be enough, but the will is there.
Looking at things through a different lens first, a scientific lens, there's enormous untapped potential in magma energy. I believe resources are a function of the energy available to create them, and given sufficient energy we could balance human welfare and environmental sustainability, very much in our favour. We can get there from here, as we are, without turning the world upside down. And surely, that's to everyone's benefit.
According to Statista, the wealth of US billionnaires grew by a trillion dollars since the start of the pandemic.
According to inequality.org, "US Billionaire wealth is twice the amount of wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of US households combined, roughly 160 million people."
According to americansfortaxfairness.org, "From 2010 to March 2020, more U.S. billionaires derived their wealth from finance and investments than any other industry. The financial sector boasted 104 billionaires in 2010 -- ten years later the number had grown to 160."
UBI amounts to a forced redistribution of capital from this tiny minority to everyone else. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I suspect that there aren't any billionnaires participating in this forum thread, so I am somewhat confused by the personal anxieties in this thread concerning the idea of UBI.
The invisible hand is a miracle. It's not a God, but it is a miracle. Imagine you are in command, over a command economy, and you want to make socks. First, you need to organise labour to plough the field, and the labour available gets paid whether the field is ploughed or not. Do you get where I'm coming from? The invisible hand distributes that decision making - by making it profitable to the individual, to foresee the need and plough the field, and plant the cotton - to sell to the sockmaker, who buys elastic from South America or something, brought here by a ships captain who thought, I know someone who would probably want to buy that. All these self interested economic decisions knit together miraculously, to produce and distribute what is needed and wanted. If you truly understand it, I think you have to recognise that's miraculous, particularly in relation to the alternative. The alternative is you will plough the field or I'll have you shot! I'd much rather get paid! Then I can go buy something from someone else, anticipating my needs!
Piketty argues that seeing it merely as "people voting against their interests" is mistaken. Every system is propped up by ideology as well. The ideas of the meritocracy, of the primacy of the market and perhaps above all the idea that there is simply no alternative to massive inequality are very pervasive.
Quoting counterpunch
And just like miracles, it doesn't actually exist.
Quoting counterpunch
Human ingenuity is indeed miraculous. No need to invent some fiction to hide it behind.
Quoting counterpunch
Yes, that's the only alternative. Nothing but orthodoxy is possible. Everything else leads to hell. So recant your heresy and buy a coke, lest your soul be forfeit!
All I see here is an appeal to authority and abuse. You offer me no reason to continue an argument I consider, conclusively proven. Thanks for the chat.
Your philosophical training was apparently insufficient to distinguish a reference from an appeal to authority.
But it is quite obvious that you have long since made up your mind.
Not much of an argument, I’m afraid, though I did put a comma where a period should have been.
I never wrote about having a say in how private health is used or accountability. I said I had no say in the transfer of my wealth to the government. So you not only have it backwards, you’re trying to mislead.
Only servile soyboys are glad to pay taxes. You don’t know whether your money goes to blowing up children or Joe Biden’s pencils.
Maybe you should just skip to your argument be done with it. It’s unbecoming wen you start begging me to answer your questions.
That’s true. Taxes and the spoils of taxes are ubiquitous. Those in power have confiscated the wealth from the citizenry since time immemorial and have spent it on things such as infrastructure and the like. But for me the benefits received from stolen money do not outweigh the moral costs.
So you do not live in a democracy? I thought you were living in Canada?
If I do not pay my taxes I am subject to many penalties, up to and including jail time. If I do not pay a the federal or provincial sales tax on food I do not eat. If I do not pay property taxes I lose my home. Do you suppose I have a say in this?
Provided you live in a democracy, you do have a say. Merely that you do not get what you want is not the same as not having a say.
Bezos makes nearly 4k/SECOND. He gets UBI 1k/month.
An elderly person with total monthly income of only a few hundred dollars Social Security, or no Social Security at all, gets UBI 0/month. And bear in mind that Social Security is a retirement investment program to which the recipient contributed his or her entire working life.
But it's fair, because Bezos will get cut off when he turns 65, just like everyone else.
Which 'Portland' are you thinking of?
The transfer of my wealth to the state occurs at the point of every single purchase I make. In which of these transactions do I get a say?
Technically VAT is paid by the store, they just add it to the price. And indirect taxes like VAT are trash and ought to be abolished except for specific goals.
Anyways you don't get a say for every single tax payment. Nor did I claim or allude to that in any way. You do get a say in government policy though, which is more than you get for any wealth not held by the government.
I assume by “a say in government policy” you mean I get to tick a box next to someone’s name once every few years, the effect of which is slim to nothing. I do get a say in the private arena, however, by accepting or refusing the terms of their contracts. I, too, am a part of this arena after all. If I don’t like the offer I can find one elsewhere and they can do the same in a reciprocal fashion.
In any case, private actors are not taking my wealth without my consent. Only the state has that sort of unmitigated power.
I checked one of Yang's website. It says anyone over 18. But in an interview on Freakonimics today, he said 18-64. But I re-listened by going to a posted sound file of the Freakomics episode, and realize now that when he said 18-64 was in January 2019. So his proposal has changed.
You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense you are not free to decline any offer, just as you're not free to not pay taxes or refuse someone with a gun to your head.
Quoting NOS4A2
Then you must be quite wealthy. Lots of people are less lucky then you are and don't really have the option to think about their consent.
In the case of food and shelter, one can choose between a variety of options. If a loaf of bread is too expensive or too stale I can decline to purchase it and choose another. The fact that I must have food doesn’t mean that I must eat the first thing that’s offered to me, though that is probably not possible with the destitute and those trapped in command economies.
Well no, it’s just that I understand the basics of trade. Which private actors take your wealth without your consent, and how are they able to do it?
Yes, you may have "options" but that doesn't make spending the money in any way optional.
Quoting NOS4A2
The landlord, the train you take to work, the supermarket you get your basic foodstuffs from, whatever you have to pay for basic insurance. "Consent" here is purely a formality. The contracts are consensual only in a superficial way.
I am not persuaded. To me, willingly paying for goods and services are not the same as having my wealth coercively taken from at every transaction. If I refuse to buy from private hands I do not receive their service; if I refuse to buy from state hands I go to jail and have to pay anyways, and with interest. I fear the latter, not the former, and I am unable to see how one could say otherwise.
You always face consequences for your decisions. How much those impact you depends on your circumstances. If you're well off and live a sheltered enough life to think that you could easily "go it alone", having relatively minor burdens like taxation might feel like the greatest evil. If you work in some sweatshop which pays you barely enough to rent and feed your family, your view on choices will likely be different.
I don't understand how one can arbitrarily "fear" the state, but not extend that same fear to anything else that wields similar power. It strikes me as magical thinking, where the state is some big dragon with extraordinary powers, and if we could only slay it, the problem would disappear. In reality the state is simply the current form that social organisation has taken, and if it were to go away, all the same powers would simply move to some other body. It's simply not plausible to run a technological civilisation on the basis of ad-hoc agreements of individuals. If all states disappeared tomorrow, the first to reconstitute itself would easily rule the world, by the simple metric of being able to marshall power beyond any individual.
Theft, robbery and forced labor are evils the last time I checked. If it is true that the impact of these consequences depend on your circumstances, and not on morals or principle, then it seems the circumstances that favor this sort of relationship is one of servility and obedience to authority, and not much else.
I personally know some people, none of whom were well off, that were born stateless, born in anarchy, and happened to have parents who believed they could "go it alone". Indeed, they did go it alone for decades, their lives consisting of mostly surfing and fishing, but state enforcers burned their houses to the ground because the government wanted to expand a provincial park. So it's just untrue that a sheltered life begets disdain for state meddling, theft and taxation.
No one wields similar power to the state, is my point, and I still do not understand how one can conflate state power with anything else. Perhaps you can explain it because no one seems to be able to move beyond simply repeating it. The state has the monopoly on violence, with military and civilian enforcement at its beck and call. It can defend its interests from domestic and foreign threats with violent force, with little accountability. The only vague comparison I can make between state and private power are organizations of the criminal variety, like the mafia.
Quoting tim wood
I recently moved from Portland to the (cheaper) foothill wilds of the north, but, if it is portland, maine, I'd be down to answer any questions about what it's like there (from my limited perspective)
Theft and robbery rely on a distribution of goods sanctioned by some higher authority.
Quoting NOS4A2
"People who like the state are servile and obedient". Yes, nice ad-hom.
Quoting NOS4A2
And they'd have died of a simple infection if there wasn't a society behind their idyll that they could rely on. I don't begrudge people who want to live alternative lifestyles like that one their place. In fact I think we can often learn a lot about what really matters from folks like these. But let's not kid ourselves into believing that a population of 11 Billion (projected) can live a similar lifestyle and survive very long.
Quoting NOS4A2
That's because states exist, and they already have the power. No-one can take it because it's taken. But if it wasn't taken, it would be.
We can argue about how much power really large corporations have. It's not as visible in developed countries, but in e.g. south america going against the interests of some large corporation can be a death sentence, no state involved (though paid off to look the other way).
Quoting NOS4A2
Very simply, the explanation for why the state has so much power is that more powerful states were more successful, mostly due to their improved ability to project force. A tribally organised people can deploy a vastly bigger proportion of their adult male population as fighters compared to some loosely organised bands. A kingdom still more. A centralized nation state even more. Once state centralisation started, the fiscal power of the state became paramount. China was a huge empire, but it only had tax revenues around 1-2% of GDP. At the same time, European nation states had several times that amount. That was still only a few percent, not enough to fund public schools or hospitals, but enough to finance armies to conquer the world.
The only really exception to this trend has been the invention of the social state, when states went from around 10% of GDP in tax revenue to above 40% not for war, but to finance a vast social state, which resulted in the most prosperous period of human history.
But, long story short, abandoning the state is a bit like turning all your swords into ploughs. Good idea, but it only works if everyone does it, or else you're going to have a really bad time once the other people with the swords show up. Dismantling the state would just mean someone else will take those powers, and there won't be centuries of custom and institutions limiting their usage of those powers.