A New Golden Age Part III: The Basic Income Guarantee

But your comment is pretty clearly motivated by an ideological commitment to the rich having more and the poor having less, rather than some genuine concern with insufficient investment. Why not just be honest about it instead of hiding behind this ideological wordplay?

Labelling the freedom of choice of a low income worker to leave a job they hate and/or work a bit less as "deadweight loss" is reveals a lot. I suppose you think the lack of ten year old children working in coal mines is deadweight loss too.

I.e. it's not "rather than building a factory, workers are making shoes for poor children," it's "rather than spend man hours making hundreds of shoes for a single rich person, make more shoes for the poor, less throw away shoes, and still end up freeing up time to make factories."

If that shoe example is too contrived for you, just do a google image search for "shoe closet":

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nOKYKVt_gf4/TZllEf3kD2I/AAAAAAAADc... http://www.theshoegirlblog.com/2012/02/celebrity-shoe-closet...

OTOH, you complaining initially that the article sells increased investment as a benefit of the policy, and then at the end of your post characterizing the article as "Demand Good, Investment Bad" is a fairly direct contradiction.

The explanation is often that it stimulates the economy, but really, is war effective at fixing the economy because it just acts as a giant reset button? If there's too many workers and not enough job, the easiest way to fix that problem is to kill X% of the population, and what better easier and cleaner way to sell this to the American people than your country is under attack and it needs your sacrifice?

Traditionally when money is "pumped into" a economy, it's via lending to banks(producing a "multiplier" effect). That money lands in the hands of the biggest capital-holders first - big businesses, investment firms, etc., so it acts to stimulate supply more than demand. The hope is that firms will see the easy money as a signal to expand their operations and take on bigger projects. If it doesn't work - and efforts like QE have basically stopped working - all you're going to get is greater inequality of wealth, as the money stops being put to use and feeds itself back into the capital markets.

And when we stimulate demand in the fashion done in the post-war era, with a huge expansion of government spending, the money is mostly landing on people building war machines and associated technologies. People are being employed and paid, but they're locked into employment of a certain nature which isn't directed at consumers - so more money is chasing a broadly similar basket of goods. The late 60's and 70's saw rapid inflation, and the technical advances and new markets that opened up from that period to today are pretty much all rooted in that early investment in military R&D.

On the other hand, when you have money land directly into the hands of consumers, that money is only skewed by cultural values. They could go Kickstart some wacky project. They could push for higher quality goods. They could pay off debts, change residences, and go back to school. Consumers aren't purely profit-seeking or utilitarian - how the macro situation would change is one huge unknown, but the main point of appeal is that it would be a very fluid kind of demand, and if consumers start disliking their ROI in one category, they can smoothly transition to something else - which means the traps and bottlenecks of other policy changes may not apply.

Do you honestly think that this is a fair description of the consequences of that course of action? There are plenty of things only available to US citizens. Voting. Running for office. Any kind of federal assistance. Military enrollment. Diplomatic protections.

I really don't see how this option is anything different from what we already have. It would be federal assistance, after all, and non-citizens already don't get that.

But even if you did this on a global level and gave everyone $20, think about what that impact would be. It's an interesting thought experiment. Consider the impoverished nation where an extra $20 would significantly impact a person's life. Would the dollar replace the local currency there eventually? Would that strengthen the dollar overall? Would it stimulate the world economy such that we'd all benefit?

I don't know the answers, but this sounds like it could work for just the U.S. and experiments in the past with it during the Nixon era have had positive results. Why would it not work on a global scale?

It has failed miserably, then. Of course, there were land law and exclusion acts enacted as legislation throughout history. Nonetheless, the USA's arrangement of basing citizenship on the principle of jus soli as opposed to jus sanguinis means its identity is a national/soil-based one and not an ethnic bloodline division, making it nominally inclusive. Hard nativism is a rather rare sentiment these days, too.

Of the larger economies, America accepts more immigrants than anyone else, even the "progressive" countries. It's among the top 5 countries in terms of percent immigrants as part of the population, not counting places like Bahrain who have migrant laborers. Can you imagine if millions of people who earn less than USD 5,000/year tried settling in Mexico, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Thailand?

Can you imagine how "anti-immigration" they would be?

It doesn't even pass the sniff test; the idea that all these people whining about having to give up their money to other people would start giving up their money to other people if it was 'voluntary'? And people actually get sucked in by this argument?

What exactly would be replaced? It's tough googling around for how much the US government spends on welfare each year, at least partly because it's not exactly clear what counts as welfare. It seems like it's somewhere between 0.3 and 1 trillion dollars per year. If it's a trillion dollars, that's only $3,000 per person, or maybe double that if it starts at age 18 (although that sounds like a condition to me).

Isn't that not enough? As in, it must be a lot lower than the welfare benefits some Americans are currently getting.

Oh? How would you characterize the results of implementing conservative economic ideas, as we've been doing in the US since the late 70s?

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

If you gave a flat distribution of income to a large population set my suspicion is that the money would flow in to housing. Depending on the underlying structure of the particular housing market(s), and the regulatory structure for those market(s) would determine what actually would happen -- better housing, worse housing, the same housing but higher rents, etc.

The other stuff the supply should be elastic enough as to not drive up prices and in some cases would even result in lower prices. Note, if the basic income was applied at a flat rate globally that absolutely wouldn't be the case.

Brazil isnt a good example of this idea working...

  > I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die.

>1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die.

If you thought the trolley problem was a nice ehtics question, that right there is pure neglect for the value of human life. Can't do anything about that for you mate.

>2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape.

The term "basic" income is stupid, and should not be used. What is basic is being able to live in reasonable conditions. As it stands, the only way to do that reliably right now is to have a guaranteed income. Sex is not necessary for you to survive. And contrary to what you might think, no, basic income is not stealing. Taxes are not stealing. That's part of living in a society. If you wish to not have things stolen from you, I highly recommend going to live in a remote part of the world, where noone will prevent you from doing your job. Of course, your job is probably only possible because of the whole framework that your society has put into place.