> what guaranteed monthly checks does to ambition
Do you think it's a coincidence that that check is only guaranteed in the absence of ambition? You've seen the perverse incentives of means-tested welfare, not the effects of a UBI.
Do you think it's a coincidence that that check is only guaranteed in the absence of ambition? You've seen the perverse incentives of means-tested welfare, not the effects of a UBI.
In Germany part of the basic rights granted by law is human dignity. Part of human dignity is participation in culture and society. As such the closest thing germany has to UBI includes a budget to permit participation in culture.
There's an optimal amount of basic income for social prosperity and it would be an amazing coincidence if that amount happened to be exactly enough to provide for people's basic needs and nothing more.
I agree that basic income won't kill ambition. But I don't think it's because we're withholding money from people. It's because people are naturally ambitious and competitive. Just because you have wealth doesn't mean you don't want more.
Maybe some people won't be ambitious, but that's not exactly a problem for those of us who are.
> Contrast to welfare where if you earn anything the welfare is taken away.
Yeah. I agree with you on this part.
We should overhaul our existing programs to provide graduated phase outs instead of creating new entitlement programs.
I see UBI in general as having far more perverse incentives than welfare does right now (and they are bad).
Government is the source of all wealth. So administering cashectomies is a fine way to mitigate hoarding.
Once our Ginni coefficient is dragged back into the "democracy promoting" realm, we can talk about liberal over reach.
Labor is the source of all wealth, not government.
> Once our Ginni coefficient is dragged back into the "democracy promoting" realm, we can talk about liberal over reach
What exactly is the democracy promoting range? How does it promote democracy exactly? The richest Americans are nearly split between democrats/republicans, so this isn't a 1 party issue.
I don't think UBI is over reach, I think it's bad policy.
Neither labor nor government is the source of all wealth. There is no one source of all wealth. Not all wealth is produced in the economy, but for the wealth that is, the source of that wealth is all of the resources (including labor) that collectively go into the production of that wealth.
Furthermore, we wouldn't produce wealth if people weren't able to buy it. So in a sense, you could say that the source of wealth is spending. And in the sense that the government funds spending (through a basic income or otherwise), the government is the source of wealth.
Depending on your perspective, wealth can have different sources. But figuring out the source of wealth isn't really that important when we know how to maximize people's wealth regardless of its theoretical source.
There's a lecture I really like by economist Steve Keen where he describes his own theory for the source of wealth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H1LIr2NMbE
His answer is that energy (a.k.a. the sun) is the source of all wealth. That's certainly a reasonable way of looking at it that you can't really argue with. But it doesn't tell us how to improve human prosperity.
My favorite quote from the lecture:
"The theory of production has got nothing to do with the theory of remuneration."
Basically this means that how much you get paid has very little if anything to do with how much you contribute. And that's exactly the way it's supposed to be. Markets determine the prices of various forms of labor and that's fine. Let supply meet demand and don't worry about whether wages happen to line up with individual incomes that are optimal for the economy.
Getting individual incomes to prosperity-maximizing levels what basic income is for.
Labor can only add value.
Government can only take value away.
If what government takes is significant, the amount must be bearable relative to the remaining resources and productivity of the labor, or collapse will be inevitable.
A benevolent government is sustainable.
A greedy or destructive government is not sustainable, even though the resulting collapse may be beyond any person's or institution's living time frame or vision. This can be exploited by design.
The currency you're trying to build is based on that model, and I just can't agree with it.
You do have intriguing points but I think we're coming at the issue from a far divide.