I assume most of the readers here are "wealthy", would not need basic guaranteed income. So let me explain why this is a good idea from a rich man's perspective.

You give poor people a basic sum of money so they don't climb over the fence and kill you in your sleep.

That's it.

Behind all the nice language this is what it boils down to. It is paying off poor people to stop pestering you. Chump change for security. Europe learned it the hard way through numerous revolutions and war - keep the lower classes happy and everyone benefits. Social housing, healthcare, the lower rungs of Maslow's pyramid.

The Romans called it panem et circenses. Not a new idea. Focus on the panem. Hungry people do desperate things.

Want to see how society looks like that does not get that? Brazil. Mexico. Have a nice house in Sao Paulo or Mexico City? Then enjoy your 3m high wall with barbed wire around it.

Sharing a bit of wealth means personal security for you. You don't get robbed. You don't get infected by shit because no one gets shots (yes, you want basic healthcare for all). You have a nice large market to sell shit to, so job security (the basic Henry Ford insight).

So there you have it, even if you hate poor people there is good reason to give them some money.

Once you've established a "protection money" system, establishing their "right" to your money & property, they are now incentivized to demand - and take - more. Panem et circenses is the last stage of polite society; the cost eventually becomes unbearable as fewer work and more expect comfort & leisure for nothing.

You give poor people money because it's generosity, kindness and help - freely given as your choice. The recipient receives knowing the charity is out of goodness, and is coupled to an expectation that the recipient will make a respectable effort to overcome poverty.

As an American, we ensure people don't climb over the fence and kill us in our sleep because (A) the firepower many have within 3 steps of bed will give potential attackers pause, and (B) the local police will apprehend surviving thugs. We also strive to reduce legal barriers to productivity, promoting liberty to earn an honest wage for honest work (rather than creating high cost of entry with a flurry of stifling regulations). Between severe disincentives to crime, coupled with easy access to rewarding opportunity, we don't have to pay people to not kill us.

I can walk any street at 2am in Vienna without looking over my shoulder.

Oakland? Philly?

A personal gun doesn't stop anyone. Fantasy from lala land.

in your gun-zones i need to carry concealed, know how to properly shoot and kill and have the risk of hurting/killing innocents. everyone loses in a real firefight. plus if i am drunk and carry stupid things happen.

but the US model is clearly better. i need to arm myself to not get robbed.

Even if the state gives you free money, you can always use some more. The solution to crime is an efficient and honest police force (or at least 2nd Amendment-style self defense), not more welfare.

One is the lack of cohesive national culture.

Another is that, by approach the poor in an appeasement frame of mind, the USA has already induced them to riot/murder with impunity.

Europe's policies don't work in the USA, and in fact, they don't work in Europe, which is bankrupt and collapsing fast.

Actually, basic income / negative income tax is a very good idea, much better than welfare schemes of almost all kinds - it has almost no administration overhead. Charity, like you advocate, has huge amounts of overhead. Milton Friedman was an advocate, for example, and he was hardly a socialist.

And the idea that charity comes from goodness? That is utter bullshit. It's 95% social signalling. Altruism doesn't exist.

If welfare is going to be provided to such a large scale as we do, then yes I'd rather the BI approach just to keep things simple and efficient - and to reveal the veiled problems a complex welfare system conceals.

And no, charity is not utter bullshit. What I do isn't signaling anything to anyone, as I keep it as low-profile & anonymous as possible. Altruism exists, and the nature of it means you don't know much about that of others precisely because its nature is to be low-profile & anonymous.

This is not the same as off-duty police being hired; they pay the department toward officer salaries. Just because they're sworn to protect doesn't mean they can't prefer to protect certain areas.

Severe disincentives to crime aren't as useful as you think, because those committing the crimes do so because they don't think they will be caught. Look at some of the absolutely medieval penalties they have in the middle east for various crimes, and yet they still have criminals.

If you can do whatever you want, you will probably want to do stuff that makes you happy. One of those things will probably not be reporting to a boss or person to whom you are accountable but that accountability is an essential part of the economic feedback loop that tells you that what you are doing is a good use of time.

    Poor == Lazy

I wouldn't "do nothing", but before meeting my wife I was on track to reducing my expenses to near zero with intention of "going off the grid" with vanishingly little interaction with & contribution to society.

BTW, a suitable gun is about US$500 - a lot cheaper than paying people enough to not hurt you.

The reason you have the firepower is because those left behind by the knowledge work revolution and living in the inland US still have sufficient political power to counter the Manhattanites and San Franciscans eager to take that firepower away ("oh no, we can't let the peons be seen carrying their icky icky AR-15s, ewww!").

The biggest pusher of gun control in the United States is Mike Bloomberg -- he also happens to be a fairly enthusiastic defender of Wall Street. In his mind it makes perfect sense: why would the elites arm themselves directly, if they can just isolate themselves in Manhattan and Pacific Heights, protected by an armed police state. His gun control support (which seems to be back firing so far) is a great way for him to score brownie points many liberals (who would otherwise be diametrically opposed to most of his positions) without actually proposing any laws that would inconvenience the top 1-0.1% of the population.

I'd imagine the Swiss voters (who are voting for this) are laughing extra hard; upon completion of their militia service, they're able buy their service rifle (SIG 552) for $35 (the cost of converting it to a semi-automatic) -- the US-export equivalent (SIG 556) costs in excess of $1800 and cannot be purchased by those in New York or CT (and without significant alterations, in California), the states where quasi-technocratic elites dominate politics: they "know" what's best for the lowest classes (hence support of paternalistic programs like SNAP as well as individual mandates like social security and ACA), they also "know" what's the best for you to defend yourself.

Switzerland? yes, you have an assault rifle. which you DO NOT CARRY while walking around. and, you have no ammo for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

you really think switzerland has low crime rates because people have empty assault rifles at home?

[Edit: I previously included a longer rant here, but, I'll just point anyone to this CDC study -- http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur... -- and let them make their own conclusions]

I do happen to think that it's better for individuals to decide on their own whether the risks of keeping a firearm are outweighed by any protection it offers. My firearms are stored unloaded, under lock, with ammo in a separate location: I live in a safe neighbourhood -- which I can finally afford to do after winning the IPO lottery (to be blunt) -- so for me the risks outweigh the benefits; I don't, however, claim to be able to make this choice for others. I would much rather see housing prices go down (even though I will be hurt personally by this) and for the (scary) trend of growing education-based stratification of US society to end -- stratification which is largely manifested in ways American families live.

"Not giving a shit about legality" is far worse than even outright (but enforced) bans -- it means the criminals are able to get away with it, but individuals citizens who want to actually use it for self-defense or sport cannot.

You're also confusing two aspects of Swiss laws: militia members can keep their service rifle at home while it's a fully automatic (i.e., an actual assault rifle) with restricted ammo (I think the restrictions, however, are to prevent the military issued ammo to be used for non-military purpose; you can still take it to the range and use it with civilian purchased ammo).

Separately from this, after the end of their militia service, they have the option of paying to have it permanently converted it to semi-automatic and keeping it under the same laws as other civilian firearms.

On the other hand, fully automatic/select fire weapons are essentially illegal in the United States, military members can't keep their automatic rifles with them at home, and so on. Like in Switzerland, most US states do permit ownership of semi-auto versions of those rifles (however, afaik in the United States, they must have been manufactured as semi-automatics -- there's murky case law that can land you into trouble for having cerrain M16 parts in an AR-15, for example). However, some states (e.g., NY) ban them completely..

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The key point here is "well regulated." Do you believe that any person, simply because they live in the United States, should be allowed to own a hand grenade? I personally think not. Is there really a difference between hand grenades and automatic rifles? Again, I personally think not.

Owning nothing newer than a quarter-century old (most likely much older and significantly used), at about a 25x markup, and submitting to strict licensing & monitoring, IF you can find anything close to what you actually want amid dwindling supply in a market more akin to "great art" investment than home defense ... hardly "perfectly able".

As an upstanding citizen, who may be called up for military duty at any time (i.e.: draft), I have a right to buy/make an M4 of my own without legal harassment & undue cost.

well regulated

Read that enumerated right as: "considering that a nation needs a standing army to remain secure, the fact that such a standing army exists does not in any way justify limiting the right of individual citizens from owning and appropriately using all the terrible instruments of the soldier, including cannons and battleships." Think about that long and hard, from the Founding Fathers' point of view (they had just overthrown domination by the world's superpower and wanted to enumerate key rights of the individual), before responding.

I've used automatic rifles. The fearful power most people impute on them doesn't exist; they're overrated (useful, but overrated). And yes, individuals should be allowed to own hand grenades, precisely because it is nobody else's right to "allow" such ownership so long as nobody is unduly threatened thereby. The "right" to restrict ownership only comes from situations where innocents are at genuine demonstrable risk of harm, at which point it's just a matter of self-defense by those innocents and their delegates (gov't/police); machine-guns & grenades do not inherently cross that line, while (yes) nukes do.

All this tangential arguing about weapons comes back to the basic argument against the thread's premise: you do NOT have the right to take my money without my permission and give it blindly to everyone else. Doing so on the pretext of "give poor people money so they don't kill me" violates my right to keep what is mine (and use it as I see fit), which is backed by my consequential right to use whatever tools necessary to enforce that right. Leave me be, and I'll be quite charitable; take what's mine by threat of force, with no more justification than mob rule, and equal force in response is justified - not because of what's taken, but because of the threat.

A bolt action or semi-auto 7.62x51 or .30-06 is a lot more useful -- especially if your goal isn't to assume the role (i.e., overthrow) whoever is coming from you but to get yourself, your family, and ideally your property away. (I've got a 5.56 semi-auto as well, but it's mostly for the purpose of being able to use cheaper and more readily available ammunition for recreational shooting and not bruising my shoulder after a range trip, while using a calibre that's still more fun/practical than .22lr)

As for taking money without your permission -- no matter how you look at it, it's going to happen (whether via income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, taxes on investment income, etc...). Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and company aren't exactly socialists: when they advocate these programs, their goals are to increase individual liberty and decrease state intervention in our lifetimes (rather than pine for a utopian anarcho-capitalist future). I'd rather that money go directly to the poor than to bureaucratic middlemen and rent-seeking corporations (most of the existing welfare programs) or middle classes who don't believe they (or perhaps their neighbours) are sufficiently competent to make their own retirement investments or choose the right health insurance plan for themselves (ACA, medicare, SS, etc...). I find the various paternalistic mandates (SS, ACA) to be more onerous than payments for the truly poor (some of whom as result of structural unemployment).

Replacing programs like SNAP and medicaid with a cash handout aren't going to increase existing tax rates, which seem to be the equilibrium as far as taxation goes -- higher taxes on the upper brackets (or on investment income) won't be accepted by the elites with political power, while increasing taxes in the lower brackets won't gather sufficient votes. They might actually decrease the tax rates by reducing bureaucracy.

Even prior to 1986 FOPA amendment, the number of people who actually owned such firearms was low -- but then again, they were only used in two crimes, in both cases by police officers. Most people who take advantage of this are collectors and movie makers.

As for me, I'll pass on jumping through enormous hoops only to buy a machine that turns money into noise: ask a member of the US armed forces how many times he's actually used the M4 or M16 in fully auto or even burst as opposed to semi-auto. This is reflected in the M16/AR-15 design: they aren't designed for "spray and pray", they're designed for carefully aimed and disciplined fire in semi-auto mode (with occasional full-auto bursts for supressive fire or against metal armour).

> I personally think not. Is there really a difference between hand grenades and automatic rifles? Again, I personally think not.

Well for starters, go to a range that rents automatics (like one in Las Vegas), shoot a fully automatic rifle, and then put it down. Then, pull the pin on a hand-grenade, drop the hand-grenade next you, and then stand in place :-) [No, I don't actually encourage you to do this]. Or you may want to consider why police cruisers have rifles (albeit semi-automatics) but not (explosive) grenades -- rifles are person-to-person weapons, grenades are effectively area/anti-materiel weapons. (Random note: When I lived in USSR, my school PE classes actually included "grenade toss" -- you'd toss a stick grenade filled with inert substance -- as a sport; it's quite challenging.)

I think the difference is immense, they're completely different kinds of weapons -- first of all hand grenades, aren't technically arms if you use the definition of arms used when the constitution was written.

They would not be protected by the second amendment even if fully automatic weapons were. Fully automatic weapons on the other hand aren't protected for the same reason "shouting fire in a crowded theater" (as much as I hate this phrase...) isn't protected, grenades are not protected for the same reason that setting fire to a theater isn't protected.

While this isn't tested, semi-auto rifles, are almost certainly protected -- as they're owned by civilians in great numbers (unlike hand grenades or automatic rifles) and compare to pistols (demonstrated per case law to be protected by second amendment) are far less frequently used in homicides (despite there being more rifles/shotguns in circulation than pistols). This certainly passes the "unusual and dangerous test" used in Heller to rule out automatic rifles, hand-grenades, missiles, nukes, etc... and all the other frequently asserted strawmen.

I'll point you at an excellent book that offers a far more nuanced reading of the second amendment than either side wants to admit -- http://www.amazon.com/Gunfight-Battle-Over-Right-America/dp/... -- including the discussion of what militia means (which is different from what it means in Switzerland, although not entirely unrelated)

This is the crux of the entire argument to me. The spirit of the second amendment is to allow the citizenry to violently overthrow the federal government if they become too powerful, as a last-resort measure. The weapons that the colonists were fighting against were 3 rounds per minute muskets and single-shot cannons, not Apache attack helicopters. Is there a really a regulatory framework that could conceivably exist that would allow for ordinary, private citizens to overthrow the full might of the US military while protecting society from wanton gun violence?

That's actually not the case. Militia meant "every able bodied white male and sometimes freed blacks" (a more expansive definition than eligible voters -- as there were still property qualifications for voting), who are meant to be armed with common civilian firearms they would purchase themselves. They could be asked to show up at a "muster" by the government, but the second amendment explicitly protected the individual right of militia members originally from federal government (later on, via 14th amendment, this was extended to the states as well as well as to anyone who is not a felon, mentally ill, etc...).

It certainly recognized the right to use these firearms for hunting and self-defense. The common musket at the time -- The Brown Bess -- was smooth bore with a 0.75" caliber and a bead sight, i.e., a 12 gauge shotgun. It could be loaded with buck shoot, with a musket ball, or (as very common) "buck and ball". So it served both the purposes of militia service weapon, for hunting many kinds of game (which wasn't a luxury, but often a necessity), and self-defence (against both humans and wild animals).

Ancestors of modern hand grenades ("bombs"), artillery, and so on all existed at the time -- but were not commonly owned by civilians.

Rather than try my hand at constitutional scholarship, I'll go by the legal theory behind the Heller decision for this. More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/22/justice-sca...

Honestly, I'll go on record and say that this is good: violent overthrow of the government worked well for the American colonists precisely because they were colonists. The Monarchist loyalists could simply leave, whereas in France, they could only do so sans the head. The stakes were much smaller, so the American revolution (or really "the first American civil war") did not lead to the horrible outcomes other violent revolutions have almost exclusively lead to. Today, the results would be far far worse -- rather than a blossoming of civil liberties, it would mean revolutionary terror, followed by an even longer period of counter-revolutionary terror. If this happens, I'll definitely want to be armed, however -- to defend myself and my family from any of the factions involved in either the revolution or the counter-revolution as I make my way to the nearest port of entry of a peaceful country.

Private armies (those reading the "militia" to mean militia groups as opposed to what it actually means) are an even scarier idea. Not to Godwin this, but it reminds me of Freikorps, SA, as well as KPD/SPD armed groups, and other (sometimes state sponsored, sometimes not) street thugs of Weimar Germany.

After all, "your money & property" are purely social relations requiring a state. The state literally prints money, and enforces "rights to property" using people with sticks.

You already pay for people not to kill you: you fund a government and a military to create civil order, without which you'd be a peasant serving a warlord. Once you create government, you have to pick some way to control it. Democracy seems the most fair, but there is as you point out an incentive for people to vote themselves material comforts.

There is of course alternatives to democracy. Plutocratic libertarianism underwritten by brutal authoritarianism (I.e. Hong Kong) seems to be popular among a certain set these days. I don't think these are fundamentally stable though. Eventually people will realize that they'd be better off under democracy.

This seems to imply that it's entirely within the recipients power. Do you truly believe that all it takes is hard work and perseverance to escape poverty? That there is no randomness inherent in success?

Thanks for enlightening us with these gems.

Oh wait, what if you waste your stipend on drugs or "loose it" or someone steals it from you because you weren't being responsible with what was basically free money? Do you get more money to waste, or do you get to kill me now for food?

The right theory for a basic income should be that all people deserve a stake in the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind, just as they deserve equal stake in the land and other natural resources. As general advancement accelerates and allows for greater production with less labor, a greater percentage of that wealth ought to be shared with everyone. So in the thought experiment where no one really needs to work and the robots take care of all of our basic needs, eventually distribution of resources should be more or less uniform.

If you view basic income as handouts then you have to answer all of the objections that you'll find in this thread: you're stealing from someone else to pay for them, you're disincentivizing work, etc. Basic income should instead be viewed as arising from principles of fairness.

This is, actually, the argument for why we shouldn't have an inflationary monetary system. Normally technological improvement is deflationary (witness lowering prices for tech goods in spite of inflation - healthcare is different because it's highly regulated). Yet what we do by inflating the currency "to keep prices stable" is to steal the marginal improvement in livelihood created by technology and throw it at the financial sector.... At best. In reality we steal more than the marginal value; hence increasing income inequality, overenriched financial sector, decreased real wages in spite of increased productivity...

If you want to argue that it SHOULD be the justification that's fine (and morally questionable, unless you like screwing the poor) but there is no historical evidence that you model ever has been the rationale for inflation.

Yeah, and that's a completely retarded model of economics. It's a consequence of the field being a giant circle-jerk of professors who cut their teeth in undergraduate classes where your merit was judged by how gnarly a formula you could come up with to prove your prowess at taking derivatives (I say this having been a math tutor at the University of Chicago, and helping econ students with their homework. There was even no concept whatsoever of dimensional analysis, much less error propagation analysis).

How can I say this model is completely retarded? Because there was deflation in the US from 1860 to 1900. And the country recovered from a civil war that decimated the population (literally, 1 in 10 were killed), built up incredible amounts of industry, made several world-changing inventions, emerged as a world power, and began closing the wealth gap.

Central banks are not run by Roman Emperors, they are run by economists - who derive no benefit from inflating a currency

Let me ask you something. Has there ever been a central banker who was part of the bottom 1%? Or have they all come from the top 5%? If it's the latter, they derive benefit from inflating a currency. In any case, this is an inapt comparison. The central banker is not like the caesar, but rather the overseer of the roman mint who instructed the slaves running the coin machine to dope it with silver.

At one point I had the impression that inflation is supposed to encourage spending, but thinking about it, it probably punishes the poor (who have pretty much no savings) more than anything

Ever wonder why the population is overleveraged and over-stressed about loans and what not? It's because the system needs people to go into debt to continue function. It's legalized, voluntary, fractional slavery, but the system wants you hand over ownership of your labor to someone else.

What is their contribution to knowledge and technology, so that they "deserve" a stake? What you're saying is that they deserve something for nothing.

Are just as many people fighting now for technology and knowledge? My impression is that they aren't, but you're advocating that they get rewarded anyway.

Imagine the entrepreneurs who might feel freed to give business a chance, rather than feeling that they can't quit their day jobs?

It would be a grand experiment with potentially huge benefits (and, as always, risks).

Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages. Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income.

It's an inflationary cycle that would be very hard to avoid.

In order to figure out a likely steady state you'd have to look at the composition of spending and employment by people around or under the proposed income, and try to estimate shifts if there was an effective employer-of-last-resort in the form of a basic income. It gets complicated fast if you want to do a good job. Hand-waving about inflationary spirals is, on the other hand, easy.

Because, unlike current poverty support programs, where the having a benefit program that gives you $X and a job that gives you $X the most you can get is $X, with basic income, you can have the basic income of $X and the job of $X and have $2X.

So, given constant wages, the marginal income effect of working would be the same for anyone not getting a means-tested program now, and greater for anyone who would get a means-tested program now. (The marginal benefit might be less in the former case because of the declining marginal utility of additional income, though.)

> Walmart and McDonalds (and everyone else) would therefore either go out of business or raise their wages.

Entry level wages are artificially high compared to market labor supply because of the minimum wage, so even if BI did reduce the supply of labor for minimum wage jobs, it wouldn't necessarily stop them from being able to fill positions at the existing wage levels. Many BI proposals also include eliminating the minimum wage, which would make work that is not currently economically viable (because, while it provides value, it doesn't provide enough value to warrant the minimum wage) viable.

> Raising their wages would increase the price of their goods. Increasing prices of goods would increase the cost of living which would increase the poverty level which would increase the minimum guaranteed income.

This, OTOH, is a real potential issue with inflation-pegged basic income: if you set the level too high for the current economy to support initially and peg it to inflation, you'll get caught in an inflation cycle.

The solution to this, as I see it, is fairly simply; dedicate a set share of the revenue from progressive income taxes to the basic income, and set benefit levels based on the lower of the levels by equally distributing the revenue from that tax to beneficiaries or the inflation-adjusted level of the starting benefit amount.

You get better self-regulation and signalling of when you need to reexamine the assumptions in your benefit levels and revenue structure, and if you initially set it at a level that would actually pull people out of the work force in a way that would trigger run away inflation, then barring direct intervention it will regulate itself back down (in real terms) until that's not the case.

Of course, I'd like to hear from someone with more serious models - this didn't even make it to a napkin...

This is the point that I didn't understand.

If we take a universe where there are 3 people, one guy makes $100, another makes $300 a year, another makes $1000 a year. We'll assume that everyone spends all their money every year.

Suddenly the gov't decides to give everyone basic income, a stipend of about $100 a year.

Suddenly the bottom guy gets enough money to live and quits his job at Walmart. Walmart finds out that people are willing to work for double the old salary though($200). So they multiply the price of goods by 2. The guy from before starts working again.

Guy 1 now has $300 a year, Guy 2 $400, Guy 3 $1100

but prices have doubled right? so in PPP the totals are: Guy 1 has $150, Guy 2 $200 , Guy 3 $550

Guy 1 still ends up richer in the end.

This universe had 0% unemployment and Walmart made no profits. Basic income doesn't destroy wealth, it transfers wealth just like pretty much any gov't scheme. And richer people will end up paying for it (oh no!).

But on the bright side, people at the bottom will end up richer (because the higher wages end up going to someone), and will be able to live in respectable conditions (Which leads to all sorts of good things like being able to keep themselves and their children healthy, lowering the incentive for crime, etc). And it doesn't have the moral judgements attached to a lot of welfare.

I haven't formalised the calculation, but I'm fairly certain that by the continuity of the universe of economics, and the fact that someone with $0 revenue now will always be richer with basic income, there are winners in the system, and so it doesn't turn into some inflationary spiral.

That said, you can make one pretty uncontroversial prediction: if you try to set the Basic Income high enough to ensure people can actually indefinitely live "in respectable conditions" with it as their main source of income, then there will be a lot less wealth being produced in the US.

And I can't see why only people actually applying for work should be subjected to moral judgements and restrictions on their lifestyle?

[1]I'm not sure who's paying for the stipend in your example. Or why Guy 2 wouldn't push for a pay rise when faced with a 50% reduction in his real wage (presumably he has some bargaining power if he's worth 3x a Walmart worker)

That is an extremely naive conclusion. Re-think your argument.

Why do you think it would go up more?

Also not everything is in the function of pay. Once people have enough for living, the deciding factor like having an enjoyable and meaningful job also do count. It's then up to Walmart to transform themselves to become that place and attract employees.

You don't think that this is a poor model of crime? There are plenty of empirical counterexamples. During the great depression in the US, crime rates went to an all-time low. The gap between the rich and the poor in the US is at an all-time high; yet the crime rate is again at a low.

Citation, please. The examples below suggest that this is not at all the case.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp

http://depts.washington.edu/depress/crime_seattle_great_depr...

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=902192a69...

http://kondratiefflongwave.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ushom...

OK, perhaps I was incorrect to say "all-time low", and should have said "trended towards a local minimum over the course of the depression"

> It was a period of booming economic prosperity, the roaring '20s, and very high crime

(emphasis mine)

The time period before the Great Depression != the time period during the Great Depression.

The chart provided suggests that there was a sharp increase in homicide rates beginning around 1920, then a slight upward trend toward 1929, and then another sharp increase through the 1930s, towards the beginning of WWII.

Do you have any other examples? I am really skeptical that crime rates went down on the whole during the least economically productive period in the history of the United States.

Also, the article directly says

"The Depression years had very little crime."

Honestly, though those crime dynamics were probably more to do with prohibition than anything else, which goes to show that crime really is likely to be dependent on factors that have very little to do with economic prosperity.

Self reliance is not to be underestimated. The state and the individual are both empowered. Being reliant on the state should be a last resort not a goal, as Europe is discovering.

Instead of enjoying your wealth on your own terms, now you're in a cycle of vetting your drivers, your nannies, and anyone else who comes within physical vicinity of you. Your physical movements are restricted to routes and destinations that are vetted and secured.

And as the wealth gap increases, the threat to your life increases also. Kidnapping a millionaire may not be worth risking your life - but what about kidnapping a billionaire? As inequality rises the lengths people will go to to harm you increases also, resulting in ever-higher fences, ever more advanced security, and a non-stop arms race between you and the poor.

This is already reality in a lot of places. I for one don't want it to become the reality here.

My point? how long till those getting the stipend are whining again about how poor they are because they make the same amount as today relative to the general population. Now we are back to square one.

Basically, the freedom to take risks. Rich people have been telling us for decades that is what they bring to the table. Risk. That's how jobs, innovation, progress and wealth are created. Let's see how it works when everyone has that opportunity.

And if it decreases crime, disease, teen pregnancy, and the dropout rate, that's just icing on the cake.

A final report was never issued, but Dr. Evelyn Forget conducted an analysis of the program in 2009 which was published in 2011. She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidences of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.[0]

We know that poverty is extremely stressful, and stress leads to all sorts of other negative things. However, there's little evidence showing that poverty provides upward pressure. If we can remove the stress of poverty, people are allowed to start functioning normally.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

That kind of assumes basic income adds to rather than replaces existing welfare programs, which already have this feature. If it replaces them -- as most basic income advocates propose -- there is no reason to expect much change in this dimension, except that people already on the programs would, under basic income, have low-wage jobs as an option -- in place of baby-making -- to get more money, where in the status quo with means-tested programs, a low-wage job is often a net loss even in the immediate term, because it reduces benefits (sometimes 1:1, sometimes even greater by passing a sharp cutoff for important benefits.)

EDIT: I play a few video games, hence why I know how distracting they are. Speaking of distractions, I should get back to work...

Moreover, if that were the case, we would have already seen it. A mincome wouldn't change that. Yet, right now, teens are one of the most under-employed demographics (as in there are more looking for jobs now than in the past), at least in the US. If they were all distracted by video games, we would have seen fewer looking for work.

And if someone refuses to get an education or better themselves when given the opportunity, are they somebody you'd like to hire for your company? Better to keep them placated with some minimum of food and shelter so they don't rob you, and save the jobs for the people who want them and will execute to your satisfaction.

Not to say that actual racism doesn't exist; of course it does. But I think when most people think "I'd rather not be around 'those people'", if they thought about it they'd find that 'those people' are really defined by either their culture or economic status, rather than their race, and that their race is just a visually-obvious proxy.

Pain, fear, and force are by far the least effective means of motivating labor, and they massively undercut the more effective means (enjoyment of the work, pride in the product of your labor, identification with and emotional investment in the enterprise, etc.). The threat of destitution is not necessary to procure labor, but only to procure it at a bargain rate.

I'm worried about the children of middle and upper-income families deciding that 'mincome' is good enough. I have yet to see any actual study or research on this that isn't 40 years old. The results were fairly positive then, but I'd like to see it replicated today. Maybe I'm worried about nothing.

With mincome, more children whose parents couldn't give them that kind of support would probably behave this way. And that would probably be a good thing.

There are also the brats of the super-rich which do nothing but throw away money, but even they are throwing their money towards people who can make better use of it. So maybe we'd have middle-income brats living off mincome and throwing it all away without doing productive work, but so what? They're not going to hoard the money, they're going to spend it, and that will drive the economy and put the money into the hands of people who are working productively.

The clear implication is, having a little bit of money to fall back on helps people build their lives.

It's also a concern given that the poor already do sit on their ass and eat mcdonald's all day. Most poor don't work and aren't looking for a job.

Most of those who are either lazy or unable to find work are poor. Many who are unable to find work are in that situation through no fault of their own.

Incidentally, data: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2011.pdf

This is wierdly backwards. The people least like to get an education are the people whose basic needs are not met.

Its not like people who grow up rich have on average lower levels of educational attainment than those who grow up poor.

If we were to do a program like this it should also include free birth control and even the option to sell reproductive rights. I've seen Idiocracy and while it is hyperbolic, I think there are elements of truth there.

Unfortunately, if you hand someone with poor money management skills a bunch of cash, they may end up with all of those luxury items & no food on the table.

To me, that sounds like hearing someone saying "I'm genuinely concerned that people will start giving their kids strange-sounding names." Sure, it's a bit odd, but so what... it's not affecting you.

Maybe you are concerned that they will fail to contribute to the economy, thus dragging it down, but if so then I wonder what you think of our current economic system which leaves a noticeable percentage of people unemployed. Maybe you are motivated by the classic Protestant work ethic and think failing to work hard is a sin, but if so I'm not sure why THIS sin is one you need to worry about in others rather than in yourself.

And at this point I should stop knocking down straw men, and wait to hear why this actually concerns you.

It concerns all taxpayers, since they're the ones paying the bill for basic income.

- It costs money

- It's presented as a way to get a profession that could maybe make you money in the long term, and not as a way to get an education. Besides, evidence seems to be to the contrary.

- The short term financial benefits are nil, and you need money now.

But when people have survival off of their minds, I think it's be easier to convince them of taking a no-risk dive into education. I think consumerism will be there, and people will still be motivated to make more money to spend more money.

A bit like the ancient greek free men: They had their lives all set for them, and so they couldn't help but think about governance, politics, arts, rights, etc.

It might free up the courses for those who are passionate about the subject matter instead.

Why would it do that?

> After all, the thought of perpetual poverty is a huge motivator.

The threat of absolute poverty may have some marginal value as a motivator, but what it motivates is largely risk-averse behavior to maintain the status quo from those at risk of poverty but not currently in it. At the same time, the reality of poverty often means, regardless of motivation, the absence of the means to many things, regardless of motivation.

> With that gone? Won't we see a higher divide between skilled and unskilled, rich and poor?

No, if we are funding a basic income guarantee from progressive income taxation, we won't see a greater divide between the rich and the poor, in any case. We might (though I don't see any reason to believe this is particularly likely) see a greater gap in skills between the "skilled" and the "unskilled" by some measures, but as this gap won't produce as large of a gap as currently between the opportunities and choices available to the next generation offspring of the "skilled" and "unskilled", that will simply reflect a greater realization of human freedom.

That, "make mo money", is the poorest and most cynical incentive to "get an education". Education is it's own reward. Not everyone desires/benefits from going into debt for a piece of paper.

People should be free (by having basic income) to choose their own education (or not at all). And not be forced into becoming fuel for the economic machine.

This "distraction" theory is a far stretch. Teens have always had distractions. And most of them have the means to acquire those distractions. So they might buy a video game they couldn't afford before. They also don't have to try to go to school and work a full time job to support their family. Having to go to school and work is a much larger distraction.

No, by providing them with a minimum income, you make them into a someone who has the freedom to expend resources to acquire new skills as their existing skills become less relevant, rather than someone chained to their current situation.

They may choose to be satisfied with their current situation, but we'd need a lot more productivity from a small slice of the population before the completely unskilled would likely to choose to do so. Under a basic income system, the marginal benefit of additional effort (and, thus, purely financial motivation) is greater than in the status quo system for people who would otherwise be beneficiaries of means-tested social support programs.

It's also a catalyst for the kind of lifestyle that quickly stifles further education. As it stands, unskilled, uneducated or partially-educated, non-wealthy individuals often have one realistic option: low-wage, long-hour labor which seems to tend to form a trapping cycle.

Now consider for a moment the line of work for (I think it's fair to assume) the majority of users of this site (software development) and the nontrivial number of people in the business who are largely self-educated. It would be silly to promote self-education and free-time online learning as an exact analog to accredited institutional education, but this field in particular presents an interesting case study in individuals simply choosing to get educated in a subject and succeed on their own time.

Is it likely that a subset of the population would simply settle for the minimum income lifestyle? Of course. But I'll wager without a second thought that freeing up a large other portion of the population to pursue their interests will in fact raise the number of educated individuals entering the workforce. After all, the promise of a higher standard of living is still a huge motivator with a basic income of only $10,000/year (still below national poverty level.) And societal attitudes towards the former group are not likely to change -- in fact the sense of tax-dollar ownership is liable to increase stigma on nonworking or nontraining individuals.

There are no modern examples of such a system to draw concrete conclusions from, so it's all hypothetical in the end. But I think you are looking at it a bit narrowly and missing the greater economic good that could come from removing "basic survival" from the top of the list of concerns of a huge portion of the population.

Why should they be free to make their own decision about how they spend MY money?

That's a lot of questions, and few answers, of course. But I think considering these ideas through this lens may be useful. The concept of “my” money, “my” property, etc, is something we've agreed on. There's nothing that says there can't be more facets to that agreement. That is what we organize for. And ideas like this, and like welfare, etc, are ideas that are meant to raise well-being. People who do well tend to create, as well. And creation breeds wealth. So while the specific mechanism whereby we encourage this creation and well-being is something that's absolutely up for debate, it's your money only insofar as you're not trading it for a service. In this case, the service is, greater wealth for all.

Will it work? I don't know for sure. But experimentation seems like a pretty good way forward, rather than simply sitting on our hands in a world where we believe we can increase well-being, out of fear that maybe our money might be misused along the way. If VCs thought this way, a lot of companies wouldn't exist today.

In the rest of the world, the poor people vote for health care, welfare, and unemployment insurance. This is because they want that safety for themselves if something goes wrong. They recognize that these programs are largely insurance. They pay into them in the expectation that most of the time nothing goes wrong, and they're not getting their moneys worth.

But when something does go wrong, the insurance is there to help them. In that situation, they get far more out of it than they put in.

Their decision to pay insurance is a rational one, based on cost/benefit analysis. It's the same as your decision to buy life insurance, or fire insurance on your house. (Car insurance is usually mandated, so I'll ignore that...)

Sure, there are scammers. But the scammers of these programs are individuals. Their impact is limited. The scams done by corporations, and people with the right connections far outweigh the scams done by Joe Average on welfare.

In the US, the poor people vote for no health care, no welfare, and no unemployment benefits. They also vote for lower taxes on the rich (corporate, inheritance, etc.). They claim this attitude is because they don't want idiots on welfare spending MY money.

You might be well intentioned, but the rest of the world thinks your approach is crazy. Not "Gosh, that's crazy!". But "We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty by reason of mental defect".

The disparity between rich and poor in the US has grown enormously in the past 20 years. And it's all because the average joe has bought a line of horse twaddle about "independence" and "welfare mom living off of MY money".

The rich people who've sold you that crap are laughing all the way to the bank. And Joe Average is left wondering why he's doing everything he's told... and is still poorer than his parents.

I.e., the guy who drifts between jobs, getting fired every few months doesn't pay more for unemployment insurance than the guy who has been stably employed for the past 10 years.

The disparity between rich and poor in the US has grown enormously in the past 20 years. And it's all because the average joe has bought a line

Nope. The disparity in the US has moved more or less lockstep with the disparity in the rest of the world (with one exception in 1986 when a change in tax law caused income to be shifted from corporate to individual returns). If policy caused it, it's a policy that basically every nation has adopted.

http://www.scottwinship.com/1/post/2011/03/what-would-it-mea...

I have a hard time with this. If your monthly nut is $5k (mortgage, cars, kids, etc) what good is an $800/month basic income going to do for you when something goes wrong?

In fact, it's likely that most people will raise their standard of living by the amount of BI they get, so their net/net when something goes wrong will be exactly the same as if they didn't get BI in the first place.

If you're the type of person that would live below their means and save for the rainy day, BI is moot - you will be fine when something happens. If you're not that type of person, then you're just as screwed with or without BI.

[If it makes you feel better to say that the government forced you to do that, fine. If you want to talk about monopolies of violence, fine. But there's no way you can reasonably consider it your money once it's left your bank account, any more than money you paid to Amazon is still your money.]

So, if the government is going to give money to people who are in need, would you prefer it to be spent according to a top-down command economy, Soviet-style, or according to a market economy with maximum information at the edges?

Since you voted for a government that distributes welfare from your taxes, the most efficient, effective and humane method of distributing that welfare is to hand out cash with no strings attached. Any additional administration is simply a waste of money, with worse outcomes.

So you want to make the system optional? If so, how would it be different from somebody simply setting up a charity?

Your second statement is pretty bold. I am not necessarily disagreeing but nobody knows what the effects of a system like that would be because we've never tried it.

Then we started making employers pay people in no-strings-attached cash, and things got a lot better for everyone. Command economies aren't just terrible for nations, but for much smaller economic domains as well. Like company towns, or welfare systems.

At the same time, the "have nots" are not the same group of people either. I think many people rotting away in the ghetto, getting involved in gangs, would in a different sort of society be leaders of men, people of rank.

Taxes are what the geeks pay for the government to suppress the people who would otherwise be the "haves."

Does anybody know if this is still possible/prevalent these days with EBT/Link cards?

You have zero idea if that is truly the case or not.

    Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax scheme would incentivize work after someone began earning over $25,000. 

There is a reason people get a little squeamish about proposals to just give poor people money...we all know what it does to us. You can't just go proposing something like this and throw out a magic number ($25k) and an assertion of how people will react to the incentive. You have to be much more careful and empirical than that.

Certainly there would be people happy to live on it without working (assuming it was a reasonable figure), and that's fine, as long as _most_ people aren't in that group. To an extent it will depend on what you set the figure at, but history has shown that most people don't like not working, even if they don't need to to survive.

An example; Ireland has a relatively generous social welfare system; an adult currently gets 188 euro a week plus housing benefit etc, and this lasts indefinitely. During the 90s-00s economic boom, unemployment fell below 4%, which is normally considered functional full employment. Clearly, when jobs were available, people wanted to do them. Now, maybe if you double or triple the figure it'll work out differently, but I'd be surprised if it would be that different. And that's a social welfare payment, which disincentivises working more than basic income (the social welfare payment goes away when you start working, the basic income doesn't).

Incentive to work is only one issue. Another is that people don't want to lose their job because it would mean that they die. That mean technological improvements are more likely to be opposed by workers. With basic income, programmers and other job destroyers will be able to automate at will, and everyone will benefit.

I would have never worked as hard as I did to finish college if I didn't have the threat of perpetual poverty and possibly homelessness hanging over my head.

Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work. I never finished college, but now I am pretty active as a self taught learner and actually care more about learning than most college students. It has been a while since I didn't study and learn something new everyday.

The threat of perpetual poverty is like the threat of dying in wars. Yes, it propel you forward, but it was not a good incentive.

I've wanted to do what I currently do for a very long time, but there was no entrance to it without college, which was something I struggled with immensely. A $10k income with some pell grants would have meant food and health care while working my way through college (which I achieved by being a truck driver on weekends), but a $25k income would have meant "fuck it, I'm just gonna do nothing".

Solutions like "Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work" might be good advice, but not a good policy.

Except we don't. We think we do. And even then, we only have a rough idea what each one of us personally might do. Yet when there have actually been experiments, people don't tend to act in line with these expectations.

> You have to be much more careful and empirical than that.

Exactly. And the (to be fair: very little) data we have so far does not support the notion that people in general won't work hard if they're paid for nothing. Some won't. Others see it as their opportunity to build something. A lot of others simply don't change their behaviour all that much.

Maybe you'd party all the time. For others, social safety nets is what makes doing something greatly useful with their time low risk enough for them to dare do it. E.g. my own example is the opposite of yours: I've never a day in my life seen poverty or homelessness as a possibility, and for me that is a large part of what has made doing startup after startup viable, because I want to do something fun and challenging. The possibility of a big payout is great, but that's a gamble with poor odds.

As kiba implies, you're basically saying "work or death". This isn't a real choice, unless the person in question is suicidal or otherwise interested in dying. Freedom of choice necessitates at least two desirable options; without this, it's coercion. You can replace "death" with the more optimistic "poverty" or "homelessness" if you prefer: the philosophical problem is the same.

The issue isn't even "a basic income will remove incentive to work". The issue is "why does there need to be an incentive to work in the first place". If society will break down if we all stop working, isn't that a problem to be solved, rather than a state to be maintained?

Private property was necessary for a time. It ensured long term investment, but if we don't switch models soon social unrest will be the limiting factor on scientific advancement and growth.

Any program which encourages people to be dependent on government rather than themselves is problematic in my view (obviously with exceptions for those with disabilites that make this impossible).

My other concern is that it's simply inflationary. Giving every adult a $34,000 basic income (the amount proposed here) would mean a married couple would be bringing in $68,000 a year doing NOTHING AT ALL productive. There's no getting around economics: money is an abstraction of productivity. To the extent you introduce money into the economy that was not created by productivity, you simply reduce its value. So what would happen is that the basic income would become the new zero line. It represents the value of zero productive work. Wages and prices would simply inflate so that a person having only basic income would be as impoverished as someone having zero income is today.

There's no other way around it. You need to give people money in a more automatized world.

wages and prices may increase, but money will still be more evenly distributed than it was before. As in the person that had nothing will now be able to get something even if prices increase. That is what's important. We simply can't leave these people behind because a robot will eventually do what they can do 24 hours per day without getting tired and more accurately than any human on earth.

I think the idea is that the money would be transferred using taxes, not printed.

So what would happen is that the basic income would become the new zero line.

How? Even if you did print the money, you'd devalue all of it, not just the new amount. If a dollar from the basic income is worth $0, then all dollars are worth $0, unless it was somehow printed in non-fungible currency.

Of course, the inflation would probably affect some prices more than others, but I don't see how could it ever turn the basic income into zero income.

Let's break it down: $68000 annually is $5667/month or $186/day. Let's say 20% is intended to go to food: $37/day. That's a reasonable amount: for a couple they'd have to shop and prepare most of their own meals and wouldn't eat extravagantly, but they wouldn't be eating rice and beans for every meal either.

For $37/day to become essentially worthless for the purposes of feeding a couple, I think it's buying power would need to drop 66% to 75%. The latter gets you down to $9.25/day, which is rice and beans territory. It's still survivable, but you can't survive well on it.

This couple would still have the equivalent of $17000/year, which is about what one person working full-time at minimum wage would earn. So, if one of them gets a minimum wage job, they'd be earning as much as two people working minimum wage, while one stays home (perhaps to care for children and avoid the costs of child care.) That's already better than the system we have today, where both of them would have to work to earn that much and any children are left to fend for themselves much of the time.

If they both get minimum wage jobs, they're now earning as much as three minimum wage workers instead of two. Again, much better than today. This keeps one of their teenage children in school instead of joining the minimum wage workforce to help support the family.

All this is assuming that the entire economy is hammered by enough inflation to cause a 75% reduction in the earning value of a dollar. Historically, it takes decades for that to happen under normal circumstances, and I don't think that changing the way the government spends money that it's already spending anyway is likely to cause hyperinflation.

You need to do something to get yourself out from the fantasy bubble that you live in. Do some travelling or take an effort to meet the disadvantaged in your neighborhood.

Probably the easiest way to meet some of these people is to meet some single Mom's. Some of them meet the stereotype, sure, but many of them are in that scenario through no fault of their own.

Not everyone has that upbringing. Not having that upbringing is strongly correlated with living a life of poverty.

In our system, some people start out with a significant disadvantage. Was it their fault? Of course not, they were born there. So why should they be punished because of which parents they had?

I think your point is bullshit. It's not like people are capable of making money when the mill shuts down. There is literally no money left in the town then.

If we don't provide for them, they will find other ways of providing for themselves. Robbery, burglary, blackmail, whatever they can find. Personally I would rather make sure that people in that situation be freed from material concerns. Most people want to do something with their lives, and this will give them the time that is needed to do something creative rather than wasting their lives trying to earn enough to eat on a minimum wage job at McDonald's.

The basic design is simple. You give every person a single dollar amount as a MBI and then ALL income (besides the MBI) is taxed at a flat rate of X percent. For example (and just using simple numbers for maths sake) pretend that the MBI is $10,000 and the tax rate is 10%. Everyone making LESS than $100,000 would actually receive a subsidy because their overall paid tax would be less than the $10,000 they received from the MBI. Everyone over $100,000 would pay a progressively higher tax approaching 20%. The results are:

1) A tax rate that is perfectly progressive providing a MBI and fully scaled real tax rate for everyone. 2) Increased income has no tax disincentives (your tax rate doesn't change because you move into a higher income.) 3) Simplifies that tax code dramatically (which would also increase revenue.) 4) Doesn't artificially encourage capital gains manipulation by large income holders. 5) Removes government manipulation of social policy by giving them ONLY two number to play with... MBI and tax rate! 6) Finally, it provides a real mechanism for everybody to feel the effects of tax rate changes. Making it MORE responsive to economic factors like income inequality. For example, if 90% of people would get more money in their pocket by increasing the MBI to $15,000 while also increasing the tax rate to 30%... the likelihood of that change actually passing through Congress is dramatically higher that it currently is because such a system is transparent to your own pocketbook.

ALL of these effects without negatively affecting market freedom. Again, we see Libertarian thought is both MORE "fair" AND more compassionate.

2) No rational person eschews more income simply because they'll pay X+dX% on each marginal dollar instead of just X%; such an action is just not on the radar of any rational actor.

3) No argument regarding the simplification of the code, however "which would also increase revenue" is a pretty extraordinary claim you haven't backed up

4) No argument here

5) Demonstrably untrue; the government will still have--and will still act on--plenty of things to "manipulate" social policy (e.g. by the award of contracts, enactment of other legislation, etc.)

6) This is just flat-out unproven assertion

So no, "we" don't see "Libertarian thought" as being both "MORE 'fair' AND more compassionate" at all.

A progressive tax system that enabled either (a) recognize income for tax purposes in advance receiving it, or (b) deferring recieved in year t+1 that is much greater than in year t for tax purposes would do the same thing, without being a massive tax break (compared to existing progressive systems) to those who make large incomes year-after-year consistently.

No, its flat. A flat tax is not progressive. The point of a progressive tax system is that the marginal impact is greater at higher income levels.

> Increased income has no tax disincentives (your tax rate doesn't change because you move into a higher income.)

In a progressive income tax system where the top marginal rate is <100%, there is always a positive incentive to higher income (well, so long as the marginal utility of additional income is non-zero; there's considerable evidence that for most people, there is some level where this assumption doesn't hold, but that isn't a tax disincentive, and tax rates don't really have any effect on it, since they are a multiplicative rather than additive effect on utility, they never take a nonzero utility to zero.)

> Simplifies that tax code dramatically (which would also increase revenue.)

Only if the flat rate is set very high compared to the existing rates paid by most of the population.

> 4) Doesn't artificially encourage capital gains manipulation by large income holders.

If this includes taxing capital gains as income, then this is true, though many flat tax proposals I've seen haven't taken that step. I'd agree that that choice is desirable independently any other changes (and it really has nothing to do with flat vs. progressive taxes or basic income.)

> 5) Removes government manipulation of social policy by giving them ONLY two number to play with... MBI and tax rate!

To do this, government has to alter the definition of taxable income (as well as many other things.) This does not eliminate their ability to make similar decisions in the future, so it doesn't remove any levers. (And, of course, government intervenes in social policy through things other than direct benefit programs and tax policy, so even fixing those wouldn't have the effect described here.)

Generally, I find "autopilot" arguments of the form "once we get government to decide X, government won't be able to decide other things incompatible with X in the future" to be ludicrous.

> 6) Finally, it provides a real mechanism for everybody to feel the effects of tax rate changes.

I'm not sure this makes any sense. Everybody feels the effect of rate changes now, but the utility effect of rate changes is different depending on circumstances. In a flat tax system with MBI, the same thing is true.

> ALL of these effects without negatively affecting market freedom.

Define "market freedom".

Marginal impact is greater. Using the numbers I listed above your marginal tax rate at a income of $10k/year is NEGATIVE 100%, at an income of $100k/year it would be 0%, at $500k/year it would be 8%, at $1m/year it would be 9%... asymptotic increasing towards 10%.

> ...there is always a positive incentive to higher income

Sorry, you are correct. I should have said there is increased income doesn't increase disincentives.

> Only if the flat rate is set very high compared to the existing rates paid by most of the population.

The point wasn't being made on total net revenue but on cost per dollar collected due to compliance enforcement and bureaucratic overhead. Regardless the flat tax rate CAN be set very high as long as there is a corresponding offset in the MBI. Ultimately the ACTUAL rate people pay could be similar to the amount they currently pay but normalized over the population as a whole.

> If this includes taxing capital gains as income

> To do this, government has to alter the definition of taxable income

Which is why I specifically mentioned ALL income.

> This does not eliminate their ability to make similar decisions in the future

This is very true, and probably the strongest argument you made in your post. Hopefully such exemptions would "stand out" with such a simplified tax structure but any government that exists will continually work to expand it's power at the expense of the governed.

> Everybody feels the effect of rate changes now

Everybody does NOT feel the effects of a rate change as often lower tax rates are unmodified while higher tax rates are adjusted.

> Define "market freedom".

Sorry, "market freedom" is both to general and arguable incorrectly used in this case. I should have said it equalizes market manipulation by the government.

You seem to be trying to count the MBI both as tax-basis income and as negative tax when computing marginal rates. This is obviously improper, because you wouldn't consider positive taxes as part of the tax-basis income.

If you consider your MBI as negative tax and not income, then at $0 income (excluding, for the moment, negative pre-MBI income, which may or may not be possible, depending on how you define "income"), the total tax rate is negative infinity, but marginal tax rate is +10%, and at $100K the marginal rate is +10%, and at 500K the marginal rate it is +10%, and at $1 Trillion the marginal rate is +10%. Its perfectly flat.

If you consider it as tax-basis income but not negative tax, then there is no income below 10K, and from 10K on the marginal rate is still a flat 10%.

You can't count the inverse of the amount paid in tax as part of the taxed income to compute marginal rates.

Let's suppose we have a basic income of $1,000 per month per citizen. This is barely enough to get by in someplace like eastern Washington and not enough to get by in someplace like Seattle but it's a nice round number so let's go with it.

The US population is about 300 million. But let's assume only adult citizens receive basic income. If you want children you have to provide for them yourself. How many adult US citizens are there? Well, Barack Obama won 51.1% of the popular vote in 2012 with about 66 million votes with 58% turnout. By my calculations that's a voting-eligible population of about 220 million.

220 million people receiving 12,000 a year is around 2.6 trillion dollars. Total federal tax revenue is around 2.8 trillion dollars, and total expenditures are around 3.5 trillion. You think you can make up the difference by eliminating other entitlements? You can't. Look it up. Basic income + defense + transportation already exceeds the current budget, with nothing left over for courts, embassies, Medicare, the space program, or the Coast Guard. And that's with a particularly low basic income that isn't really enough.

So you're left with having to raise taxes. Fine, you might say, just tax the rich--except even if you subtract out a lot of entitlements to close the budget gap, including social security, you still have to raise maybe an extra trillion dollars in tax revenue just to keep a comparable deficit.

The only way to really make basic income work is if it's effectively means tested. One way of doing this might be to say: if you get paid 72,000 a year, your salary drops to 60,000 and the government taxes your employer for the 12,000 that you receive in basic income; either that or you just don't receive basic income anymore, it's mathematically equivalent. But that is more of a guaranteed minimum income than a basic income anymore, and it's politically that much more difficult.

I read through a breakdown in one of the Basic Income books, of what it would cost just to get a $10,000/year basic income. Here's just some of the changes that would be needed:

* cut military spending by a third; * get rid of ethanol subsidies; * get rid of mortgage interest tax breaks; * get rid of "married filing jointly/separately" filing status, make everyone file just for themselves

And that's just the ones that jumped out at me. Virtually all tax loopholes would have to be gotten rid of, and more. All for just the $10K/year basic income level.

So, just as a question of the political cost to implement, Basic Income seems like a laughable non-starter.

Obviously I'm not advocating giving $1T to Bill Gates, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding that gets repeated over and over again. Rich people do not keep their money under their mattresses. Much of it they keep in a variety of financial instruments, most commonly stocks and bonds. Sale of stock is how many companies finance their operations, which includes, among other things, hiring people who pay taxes. Bonds are how corporations and governments fund things like building factories, roads and schools.

Even if Bill just kept it in the bank, the bank now has more money to lend at easier terms to businesses needing capital.

There is a serious economic study and debate about how much of a "multiplier" effect you get from handing money to a poor person vs. to a rich person. It wouldn't surprise me if it were higher for the poor person, but it's surely not 0 for the rich person.

In practice I don't think that would be any different for the middle and upper classes in the US than it is now - you sort out your withholding in advance and pay it during the year, and then you don't owe much at the end of the year. You'd just be withholding your basic income because you're not poor.

I really dislike how little people think BI systems through before dismissing them. You are smarter than all the economists who support it?

Yes; if you'd bothered to read the last paragraph of my comment before responding to it, you would have seen that I reached the same conclusion.

> I really dislike how little people think BI systems through before dismissing them

I really dislike how people like you can't be bothered to read and comprehend someone's comments before making these little dismissive responses. You should work on your reading comprehension before you accuse other people of not thinking things through.

There are enough things in the commons that need doing, I can't see just giving the money away to the able bodied/minded.

What's wrong with using tax money to approach 100% employment, and if you want a larger salary, get a private job? (as for the more grungy private jobs, if they can't find people to do them for $MIN wage, maybe they should up the automation or fold, in some cases)

Note that I am NOT advocating government ownership / communism, just basic Keynesian spending directed at useful activity, with the goal to keep unemployment near 0%. I suppose that in itself could be a nightmare for some corporations, but screw 'em. Treat people w/ dignity, or they can/will work elsewhere. (at least in the fantasy world in my head :-))

Recapping some other comments in this thread:

"Money for nothing" is very likely to cause inflation. So would full employment, but perhaps actually having something of value produced by the employed would offset that some?

Not many people would be satisfied sitting around doing nothing all day. Even in high school, most people got a bit bored after the end of summer break.

I think the thing behind the increasing popularity of basic income is that we live in a world in which capital is increasingly important, and the fundamental idea of wage labor as the main source of income is breaking down. Creating make-work government wage-slaves is not a solution to this problem; creating a tax-and-general-benefit structure which amounts to an assessment on those making the most from the commons that is redistributed on an equal basis, OTOH, is.

It is important to point out that under Murray’s proposal, which is outlined fully in his book In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State, after someone’s total annual income reached $25,000 a 20 percent surtax tax would be imposed on “incremental earned income,” capped at $5,000 once someone earns $50,000 a year.

OK, not uncle Milty, some other libertarian. Still, a tax that stops at $50K is hard to call something other than regressive.

In my memory, the political ads against it were only exceeded in impact with the ones about his proposed gutting of our military (had toy soldiers, ships, etc. on maps with a hand sweeping away the percentage he proposed to cut; this did not do well in a period when Cold War was very hot).

A basic minimum income would at a stroke sweep a way a large army of box-ticking officials and end the pernicious moralising and absurd punishments for not adhering precisely to whimsical rules.

If you are a monopoly, of course you would. That's called a monopoly rent -- and why, in a supply monopoly, the demand curve effectively sets prices.

If you aren't a monopoly, you won't because competitors (either existing or new entrants) will undercut your prices until the prices are dropped to the economic cost of production.

Either way there are only like 3 players in the "basics" market anyway so we're closer to a monopoly as it is.

Its how pricing works in a competitive market where even a loose approximation of rationality applies.

> Your competitors would raise prices, not lower them.

"Lower" relative to yours (or compared to incumbents, in the case of new entrants.)

> Either way there are only like 3 players in the "basics" market anyway so we're closer to a monopoly as it is.

To the extent that the absence of a competitive market in basics is a problem, its a problem independently of basic income and needs to be addressed whether or not a basic income is adopted.

Or we let private charities cover the gap. But when they don't, we let them die on the street?

And if we don't let them die on the street, we find ourselves back where we started, in need of a social insurance safety net for basic necessities.

What happens when your $50,000 in medical bills is greater than your $27,000 in annual income (or whatever it happens to be), and you elected not to purchase insurance with your money? Serious question, not meant at a dig against this proposal, because I am genuinely curious as to how it would be handled.

This applies most of the the large-purchaser effect of a social program, but isn't a traditional social benefit program (sure, the actual ACA, which has subsidies for some purchasers, includes a traditional social benefit program as a component, but there is no reason that the rest couldn't be maintained with similar benefits without the subsidy in a BI system.)

Does it, though? That's what I'm wondering. Is there any evidence that the model followed by the Affordable Care Act is not significantly more expensive per capita than a single-payer, "Medicare for all" kind of system?

Or are you are using "welfare state" as a pejorative? Because it is a real phrase with a non-pejorative meaning.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/federal-spe...

It's probably an affordable program at $1,000 a year, but at that level, is it going to make a difference?

1) To combat extreme poverty, a lot of great studies show that giving direct cash is better than giving non-profit services. http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-...

2) Instead of expanding the welfare state, it's probably better that we expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which has HUGE support on both sides of the aisle. It was first created by Milton Friedman and is one of the only things that is a policy that we predicted would be successful and became hugely successful. The issue is that each party in the United States has found that public opinion polling finds that "SNAP" or other parts of the federal government are hugely popular compared to the wonky sounding EITC.

3) Some studies also show that despite poverty, human beings will also forgo basic necessities (as determined by the state) and buy things like smartphones, text messaging plans, etc.

All in all, really, what we should be doing is likely cash infusions to the extremely poor, expanding EITC (which somewhat supports the article), and keeping the important parts of the state alive, e.g. healthy food, early childhood pre-school, etc.

The problem is, its 14+ different programs doing it - if we make ONE program, we've just cut how many administrators and bureaucrats out of the loop saving however many dollars in overhead - plus all sorts of different infrastructure systems to administer and pay it all.

It's logical common sense this program would work more cheaply (and possibly better) just thru overhead savings. Means tested welfare is wasteful.

As for social security, it would have to be slowly phased out. The people on it now and the still working have been paying into the system, and should at least get there money back plus interest.

We should judge this from a pragmatic, not ideological, viewpoint. It may not be the ideal libertarian society, but it could easily be better than the current one, where we are already paying an insanely high amount of taxes which are in great part wasted.

But I don't see its application without some huge political change, as politicians would be most unwilling to give up the power they now yield. Let me share a well known Spanish saying:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quien_parte_y_reparte_se_lleva...

The problem is, in essence, all you are doing is disincentivizing one person to work by paying them with another person who has chosen to work. Money is the ultimate incentive. Not to mentioned the effects on the overall economy. What do you think happens when everyone has more money to spend? Prices go up, and your 5k/month becomes worth what 2k was a few years ago.

Assume that Alice has a million dollars and Bob has nothing. Eve sells pumpkins. She's currently charging $1000 per pumpkin, which cost her $100 to grow. She makes $900 profit.

Now, we add the minimum income proposal. Alice is taxed $900 and this $900 is given to Bob. Even would then lower her price to $900. Bob is better offer, since he now has a pumpkin. Eve is better off, as she made $1600 in profit, as opposed to her old 900. Alice is out $800 dollars compared to the old system, but that's less than the $900 she was taxed.

Of course, this was just an example and there's no guarantee that it would go down this way. On the other hand, there's no evidence that it must head down the inflation road, either.