CDZ Why not have a 'Universal Basic Income' to replace welfare?

[Unkotare]

... I never did a course in economics------.......

And you're not an economist. Neither was marx.

 

[JimBowie1958]

She might just be saying he took a course on economics included with his philosophy and political science classes, which is possible.

Still doesn't make him an actual economist.

I dont think that Marx regarded himself as an economist - not sure the concept of such a profession even existed at that time. If I recall Correctly he considered himself a historian and philosopher, you know a useless humanities major, lol.

But as he wrote one of the biggest economic impacting set of book in the history of the world, maybe we could give him a pass and say that he was effectively an economist?

 

[OffensivelyOpenMinded]

She might just be saying he took a course on economics included with his philosophy and political science classes, which is possible.

Still doesn't make him an actual economist.

I dont think that Marx regarded himself as an economist - not sure the concept of such a profession even existed at that time. If I recall Correctly he considered himself a historian and philosopher, you know a useless humanities major, lol.

But as he wrote one of the biggest economic impacting set of book in the history of the world, maybe we could give him a pass and say that he was effectively an economist?

But he didn't even go into detail when it came to economics, all he did basically was criticize capitalism and call for socialism. He hardly touched on how socialism would actually work as an economic system.

I have to disagree with him being an economist.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It is definitely time to find alternatives to the present system.

We will have to or dreadful things will happen to our society. IF we reach 50% unemployment as has happened in many black communities here in the USA, we will have a political situation similar to what we see here in the USA regarding Black Lives Matter and civil unrest.

If what happened in Fergusun happens all over our country, we wont have a country in the aftermath, just a bunch of ash heaps connected by failing roads and railways.

When you take away a mans home, why not burn everything else to the ground? He has nothing to lose.

 

[JimBowie1958]

But he didn't even go into detail when it came to economics, all he did basically was criticize capitalism and call for socialism. He hardly touched on how socialism would actually work as an economic system.

I have to disagree with him being an economist.

He laid the foundation to all Capitalism critiques for the next 150 years and you think that is not an economist for the mid 1800's?

 

[OffensivelyOpenMinded]

But he didn't even go into detail when it came to economics, all he did basically was criticize capitalism and call for socialism. He hardly touched on how socialism would actually work as an economic system.

I have to disagree with him being an economist.

He laid the foundation to all Capitalism critiques for the next 150 years and you think that is not an economist for the mid 1800's?

Critiquing an economy does not an economist make. Hitler would fit that description of an economist if Marx is considered an economist for critiquing capitalism. Any guy on the street who holds a sign saying "Down with capitalism!" would qualify as an economist.

 

[JimBowie1958]

But he didn't even go into detail when it came to economics, all he did basically was criticize capitalism and call for socialism. He hardly touched on how socialism would actually work as an economic system.

I have to disagree with him being an economist.

He laid the foundation to all Capitalism critiques for the next 150 years and you think that is not an economist for the mid 1800's?

Critiquing an economy does not an economist make. Hitler would fit that description of an economist if Marx is considered an economist for critiquing capitalism. Any guy on the street who holds a sign saying "Down with capitalism!" would qualify as an economist.

Lol, if you think Das Kapial is comparable to Hitlers ramblings in Mein Kamph or to a dude holding up a sign, well, you need to read up on the topic more.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

A universal basic income is an intriguing idea. I don't know in practicality how well it would actually work. It would be interesting to see one of the states try it out on their own.

 

[OffensivelyOpenMinded]

But he didn't even go into detail when it came to economics, all he did basically was criticize capitalism and call for socialism. He hardly touched on how socialism would actually work as an economic system.

I have to disagree with him being an economist.

He laid the foundation to all Capitalism critiques for the next 150 years and you think that is not an economist for the mid 1800's?

Critiquing an economy does not an economist make. Hitler would fit that description of an economist if Marx is considered an economist for critiquing capitalism. Any guy on the street who holds a sign saying "Down with capitalism!" would qualify as an economist.

Lol, if you think Das Kapial is comparable to Hitlers ramblings in Mein Kamph or to a dude holding up a sign, well, you need to read up on the topic more.

Oh I've read plenty on it, and I have read Das Kapital. In fact I own two copies of it. Days Kapital is little more than an emotional appeal in my view.

 

[320 Years of History]

I have read Das Kapital. In fact I own two copies of it.

One wasn't enough? LOL (just messing with you)

 

[OffensivelyOpenMinded]

I have read Das Kapital. In fact I own two copies of it.

One wasn't enough? LOL (just messing with you)

I always try to buy two copies of every book, one is for making notations and the other remains in it's original state.

 

[320 Years of History]

I have read Das Kapital. In fact I own two copies of it.

One wasn't enough? LOL (just messing with you)

I always try to buy two copies of every book, one is for making notations and the other remains in it's original state.

I guess literally one wasn't enough. LOL

 

[320 Years of History]

I like this idea as it will smooth out the transition from a wage based economy to a new technologically based barter economy that will arrive within 30 years if not much sooner.

Now before you start yelling 'But the lazy dindus wont work!' well, the way technology is advancing in such a way that very few people will work no matter how hard they try to find a job; there simply wont be enough jobs to employ more than about 15% of the population, if passed slave economies are any valid comparison economically. Just as there were some jobs one could not train a slave to do well, or a slave was too expensive to have them do those jobs, so too there will be jobs that an android wont do because of the same reasons. Of course the economy has changed quite a bit since 1860, but I think morphologically the analogy is valid.

Besides, what else do we have to guess with?

But this concept of a Universal Basic Income is the kind of thing we will need to salve the insecure who have alwayus thought of employment = financial security. In the coming technological Utopia we will have far deeper challenges, like finding a purpose to our lives when employment is not a realistic option..

Zoltan Istvan: 'Half of Americans Will Probably Have a Robot in Their House' Within 5 Years - Breitbart

We’ve followed two seemingly disparate lines of thought, so let’s take them to their logical conclusion: Let’s say that we do that. Let’s say that we accomplish sort of “science-industrial complex,” that we can win this battle against mortality itself. At the same time, we’re developing these technologies with increasing automation, and we’re making human workers literally redundant. What happens when those two concepts meet? It seems to me that we would have a more and more long-lived population, with fewer and fewer occupations available for them. How can those conclusions co-exist without becoming hopelessly entangled?

Oh yeah, no. Indeed it will be tangled. But, you know, this is where I think that in my own campaign and the Transhumanist party, we support, very deeply, a Universal Basic Income. Now when you hear the words “Universal Basic Income,” it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s some kind of socialist perspective. There’s also ways to create a universal basic income through Libertarian means and our Libertarian ideas and stuff like that.

One of our ideas is that with a Universal Basic Income, with the automation coming that’s going to replace so many workers, is going to be a huge amount of prosperity for the companies who are replacing the human workers with machines. That prosperity can go towards creating Universal Basic Income, so that we don’t create a society even moreso of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

And, I think more prosperity is going to mean more money in the system. Let’s spend more taking care of those Americans who have lost their jobs. In fact, it’s not just those Americans who have lost their jobs. I’m not just interested in only those Americans who have lost their jobs. I’m actually interested in every single American.

The reason I’ve always liked the Universal Basic Income is because it allows for every single person to get a certain amount of money — enough to feed and clothe themselves, and house themselves — and on top of that, they can create whatever kind of world they want. They can build empires. But nobody is left out of that system.

And a Universal Basic Income can do a lot of other things too. It would wipe — it would essentially replace — welfare. ....

This or something very much like it is coming, and we need to evaluate our options and take responsible action to alleviate the most disruptive technology driven change that mankind has ever seen occur in one generation.

Howdy. I told you I'd share my thoughts on the matter of UBI. I am sorry that my efforts to read the materials in my self-composed reading list on the matter have been delayed, having only begun a couple hours before I began this post, but I have begun and below are my initial thoughts inspired from what I have read so far.

Please note, that my comments are nothing other than the notes I've made during and after reading the noted sources. I haven't arrived at any conclusion of which I'm certain, only at thoughts about what I've read as viewed through the lens of what I do already know or believe. As one would expect of any objective approach to discovery and analysis, my notes will one way or another be used to inform my final thoughts on the matter, but the interim conclusions in my notes may or may not be those presented or even articulated by me as my final conclusion(s).

I'm sharing my reading notes mainly and literally to drag you along my process of discovery re: UBI, seeing as you've "forced" me into it and I let that happen. <winks> More importantly, I'm sharing my notes to see if you have thoughts you may care to share as a consequence of your having read (already known) the content found in the documents I'm reading.

P.S.
The nature of my notes varies with the nature of the document I read, but in all cases I note what I want to recall later.

• A Brief History of Basic Income Ideas
  • Foundational overview of the nascence and development of the concept.
    • Document purpose: provide insight to the nature of UBI and the nature of various approaches to enabling/providing UBI to people.
    • Document use: identify high level changes over time in the UBI provision implementations and so as to gain/glean ideas on how those changes affect achieving the goal of ensuring UBI for "everyone"
  • UBI is not a new concept; it's been around and prominent in Western sociopolitical thought and policy since the Renaissance.
  • The document subtly calls attention to key differences in how the idea of UBI has changed over the past 600 years.
  • Seems unlikely that society as a whole objects to the core principle of "everyone" having, at the very least, whatever sum equates, at the time, to the UBI.
  • Means testing is a relatively new aspect incorporated into UBI aimed policies.
    • Question: Why were means tests adopted? Was it to lower (keep as low as possible) the cost of UBI programs? Was it for some other reason? [look for possible plausible answer(s) to this in subsequent readings; may need to look beyond them to find the answer(s)]
  • My observations on how, over time, the UBI concept's mode of implementation changed fundamentally and how those changes affected the outcome of enabling/ensuring "everyone" has at least that minimal level of economic and financial resources has changed over time:
    • Key difference between pre and post 20th century ideas:
      • Before the end of the Homestead Act, people were given the key tool needed to be financially successful (i.e., earn a decent sum of money) in the economy in which they lived, that is the prevailing economy, which then was primarily agrarian, the idea being that given that tool, one can and will use it effectively and efficiently enough to at least sustain oneself (one's family) in reasonable comfort.
        
        Under the pre-20th century implementation of the UBI concept, leaders recognized that land, labor and capital are the "levers" of an economy; thus they aimed to ensure "everyone" had possession of the one lever that with the least amount of effort could in turn provide access to the other two. Prior to about the mid-20th century, the lever that could do that was land, for at the very least, one could farm it and thereby feed, house and clothe oneself, and done well, one could even sell some of one's produced goods to earn income.
        
        For example, upon receiving 50 acres of land, one might sell one or two acres of it to a non-agrarian capitalist (industrialist or service provider) and use the proceeds to:
        • Buy one sheep, one pig, a dozen chickens, and two horses, all of which one will allow to feed off of some share of the remaining land.
          • Allow each pair of animals to breed (with one's neighbor's similar creature where one has only one such beast) at least once, some more than once.
        • Buy a hoe or a plow, some seeds, an axe or saw, and a basic firearm (explosive or nonexplosive) to fend of animal predators or to hunt them for food.
        • Harvest vines to tether the livestock until one can....
        • Harvest the trees/saplings from the land to build a small home and some fences to corral ones livestock.
        • Plant seeds to grow vegetables.
        • Etc., etc., etc....

One may or may not have "made it," and "making it" wasn't easy, but one was at least given the key tool needed to "make it" and become a capitalist who can then, say, buy that "acre or two" from a later homesteader who is just starting out, and in so doing, expand one's own foothold as a capitalist, which, upon being given land, one instantly became.

Succinctly, our forebears understood that under capitalism, the way to help everyone succeed is to make everyone a capitalist and/or indispensable to (other) capitalists, thus the land grant rather than a gift of money. Did it work? I'd say it did. It produced the America that saw its industrial revolution not long after Jefferson's time, and that produced the gilded age by the late 19th century, the America that was the breadbasket of the world and the industrial powerhouse of the world certainly by the mid 20th century, if not before then.​

• 
  
  • After the end of the Homestead act, what's given isn't the thing needed to achieve one's own financial success through one's own efforts. "The system" instead begins to give that which defines the measure of financial success -- money itself and the necessities it buys -- but leaves recipients devoid of any means to achieve financial sufficiency absent the actual handout.
    
    In other words, the modern paradigm for UBI assuages our emotional need to feel good about helping folks and not letting them starve, go homeless and naked -- as well we should not allow those things to happen to our fellow men -- but it also ensures that those whom we help don't get so much help that they can likely join the ranks of capitalists and compete with existing capitalists.
    
    The thing is that in the present, it's not land that enables full participation in the capitalist, nee American, dream. These days, it's knowledge and information that does that. Why? Because this is the Information Age. Duh. Could it be any more plainly identified? The information that generates profits these days is the sort that can only be gained from education, education beyond what is offered in K-12 schools.
    
    So, even though we begrudgingly give folks food, housing and money, we ensure they get the one thing they must have to eventually not need the food, housing and money gifts. People regard schools as "all that's needed" in the quest to educate their kids, and, we as a society, allow our school system to function as a "babysitter" rather than an educator when and where parents abdicate or cannot in the first place provide the needed supplements to the information teachers attempt to impart to their kids.
    
    I can't say why some parents behave that way, but I know some do, and I know that to the extent that those who do are currently among the "left out" segment of society, neither their nor their kids situation will improve as long as they continue to do so.
• Basic Income in a Globalized Economy

Selected statements from the document and thoughts about them:​

• • "If nations are no longer able to perform their redistributive function because of their immersion in a global market, let us globalize redistribution."
    • Questions:
      • What structural economic reasons constrain or prohibit nations from performing this function?
        • Answer: The two noted on the prior pages: economic and political exigencies (some potentially avoidable and some plausibly unavoidable) resulting from transnational migration: the "race to the bottom" (term defined by them) and social/political heterogeneity. (re-read this section later to see if it still jibes)
      • Do they think national borders and the consequences of them be the drivers to the challenge noted in this section's heading?
      • Do they think that globalization itself or nationhood in an evolving global economy be the, that is, is the challenge transient or self solving?
  • "Globalized redistribution can of course hardly be expected to take the form of a complex, subtly structured welfare state that stipulates precisely what qualifies as a relevant need and the conditions under which, the way in which and the extent to which social solidarity will cover it. If it is ever to come into being, it will need to take the crude form of very simple benefits funded in a very simple way."
    
    • Question: So is a world of multiple and competing nation states doomed to inability to provide severally for the people who occupy the planet?
  • "Faced with this twofold challenge posed by trans-national migration, is there no better option than to mourn the epoch of tight borders, or perhaps to dream of a world freed of massive international inequalities and of the irresistible migration pressures they feed? Far from it. True, we must honestly recognize that generous solidarity is easier to imagine and implement in a closed homogeneous society cosily protected by robust borders against both opportunistic migration and ethnic heterogeneity. But having done that, we must actively explore and advocate three possible responses to the challenge we face."
    • Question: Might "tight national borders" mean not only "well controlled" but also "clearly defined"? Given the context, that seems plausible. Have to keep reading to find out....
    • Question: Why is the demise of tight borders necessarily a thing to mourn? Seems to me if the aim is the sufficiency and contentment of humanity, borders shouldn't matter. It's not as though what a human would or does need to be content varies by nation of residence. If the aim of sufficiency is inextricably tied to the nation state itself rather than its residents, well, then, yes, the demise of tight borders is something to mourn.
      
      [Keep an eye open for later in the paper indications of why they have the inherent assumption, given the subject matter and their paper's opening, the existence of tight national borders is something to retain or not retain in the context of achieving the objective of providing UBI for substantively everyone.]
• The Many Faces of Basic Income
• The Relative Cost of a Universal Basic Income and a Negative Income Tax
  
• Two redistributive proposals—universal basic income and stakeholder grants
  
• Redesigning Distribution: basic income and stakeholder grants as alternative cornerstones for a more egalitarian capitalism
  
• Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform
  
• HOW BIG IS BIG ENOUGH: WOULD THE BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE SATISFY THE UNEMPLOYED? (editorial)
• Democratizing Citizenship: Some Advantages of a Basic Income
  
• Basic Income: A simple and powerful idea for the twenty-first century
  
• The Pros and Cons of a Guaranteed National Income

 

[JimBowie1958]

I like this idea as it will smooth out the transition from a wage based economy to a new technologically based barter economy that will arrive within 30 years if not much sooner.

Now before you start yelling 'But the lazy dindus wont work!' well, the way technology is advancing in such a way that very few people will work no matter how hard they try to find a job; there simply wont be enough jobs to employ more than about 15% of the population, if passed slave economies are any valid comparison economically. Just as there were some jobs one could not train a slave to do well, or a slave was too expensive to have them do those jobs, so too there will be jobs that an android wont do because of the same reasons. Of course the economy has changed quite a bit since 1860, but I think morphologically the analogy is valid.

Besides, what else do we have to guess with?

But this concept of a Universal Basic Income is the kind of thing we will need to salve the insecure who have alwayus thought of employment = financial security. In the coming technological Utopia we will have far deeper challenges, like finding a purpose to our lives when employment is not a realistic option..

Zoltan Istvan: 'Half of Americans Will Probably Have a Robot in Their House' Within 5 Years - Breitbart

We’ve followed two seemingly disparate lines of thought, so let’s take them to their logical conclusion: Let’s say that we do that. Let’s say that we accomplish sort of “science-industrial complex,” that we can win this battle against mortality itself. At the same time, we’re developing these technologies with increasing automation, and we’re making human workers literally redundant. What happens when those two concepts meet? It seems to me that we would have a more and more long-lived population, with fewer and fewer occupations available for them. How can those conclusions co-exist without becoming hopelessly entangled?

Oh yeah, no. Indeed it will be tangled. But, you know, this is where I think that in my own campaign and the Transhumanist party, we support, very deeply, a Universal Basic Income. Now when you hear the words “Universal Basic Income,” it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s some kind of socialist perspective. There’s also ways to create a universal basic income through Libertarian means and our Libertarian ideas and stuff like that.

One of our ideas is that with a Universal Basic Income, with the automation coming that’s going to replace so many workers, is going to be a huge amount of prosperity for the companies who are replacing the human workers with machines. That prosperity can go towards creating Universal Basic Income, so that we don’t create a society even moreso of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

And, I think more prosperity is going to mean more money in the system. Let’s spend more taking care of those Americans who have lost their jobs. In fact, it’s not just those Americans who have lost their jobs. I’m not just interested in only those Americans who have lost their jobs. I’m actually interested in every single American.

The reason I’ve always liked the Universal Basic Income is because it allows for every single person to get a certain amount of money — enough to feed and clothe themselves, and house themselves — and on top of that, they can create whatever kind of world they want. They can build empires. But nobody is left out of that system.

And a Universal Basic Income can do a lot of other things too. It would wipe — it would essentially replace — welfare. ....

This or something very much like it is coming, and we need to evaluate our options and take responsible action to alleviate the most disruptive technology driven change that mankind has ever seen occur in one generation.

Howdy. I told you I'd share my thoughts on the matter of UBI. I am sorry that my efforts to read the materials in my self-composed reading list on the matter have been delayed, having only begun a couple hours before I began this post, but I have begun and below are my initial thoughts inspired from what I have read so far.

Please note, that my comments are nothing other than the notes I've made during and after reading the noted sources. I haven't arrived at any conclusion of which I'm certain, only at thoughts about what I've read as viewed through the lens of what I do already know or believe. As one would expect of any objective approach to discovery and analysis, my notes will one way or another be used to inform my final thoughts on the matter, but the interim conclusions in my notes may or may not be those presented or even articulated by me as my final conclusion(s).

I'm sharing my reading notes mainly and literally to drag you along my process of discovery re: UBI, seeing as you've "forced" me into it and I let that happen. <winks> More importantly, I'm sharing my notes to see if you have thoughts you may care to share as a consequence of your having read (already known) the content found in the documents I'm reading.

P.S.
The nature of my notes varies with the nature of the document I read, but in all cases I note what I want to recall later.

• A Brief History of Basic Income Ideas
  • Foundational overview of the nascence and development of the concept.
    • Document purpose: provide insight to the nature of UBI and the nature of various approaches to enabling/providing UBI to people.
    • Document use: identify high level changes over time in the UBI provision implementations and so as to gain/glean ideas on how those changes affect achieving the goal of ensuring UBI for "everyone"
  • UBI is not a new concept; it's been around and prominent in Western sociopolitical thought and policy since the Renaissance.
  • The document subtly calls attention to key differences in how the idea of UBI has changed over the past 600 years.
  • Seems unlikely that society as a whole objects to the core principle of "everyone" having, at the very least, whatever sum equates, at the time, to the UBI.
  • Means testing is a relatively new aspect incorporated into UBI aimed policies.
    • Question: Why were means tests adopted? Was it to lower (keep as low as possible) the cost of UBI programs? Was it for some other reason? [look for possible plausible answer(s) to this in subsequent readings; may need to look beyond them to find the answer(s)]
  • My observations on how, over time, the UBI concept's mode of implementation changed fundamentally and how those changes affected the outcome of enabling/ensuring "everyone" has at least that minimal level of economic and financial resources has changed over time:
    • Key difference between pre and post 20th century ideas:
      • Before the end of the Homestead Act, people were given the key tool needed to be financially successful (i.e., earn a decent sum of money) in the economy in which they lived, that is the prevailing economy, which then was primarily agrarian, the idea being that given that tool, one can and will use it effectively and efficiently enough to at least sustain oneself (one's family) in reasonable comfort.
        
        Under the pre-20th century implementation of the UBI concept, leaders recognized that land, labor and capital are the "levers" of an economy; thus they aimed to ensure "everyone" had possession of the one lever that with the least amount of effort could in turn provide access to the other two. Prior to about the mid-20th century, the lever that could do that was land, for at the very least, one could farm it and thereby feed, house and clothe oneself, and done well, one could even sell some of one's produced goods to earn income.
        
        For example, upon receiving 50 acres of land, one might sell one or two acres of it to a non-agrarian capitalist (industrialist or service provider) and use the proceeds to:
        • Buy one sheep, one pig, a dozen chickens, and two horses, all of which one will allow to feed off of some share of the remaining land.
          • Allow each pair of animals to breed (with one's neighbor's similar creature where one has only one such beast) at least once, some more than once.
        • Buy a hoe or a plow, some seeds, an axe or saw, and a basic firearm (explosive or nonexplosive) to fend of animal predators or to hunt them for food.
        • Harvest vines to tether the livestock until one can....
        • Harvest the trees/saplings from the land to build a small home and some fences to corral ones livestock.
        • Plant seeds to grow vegetables.
        • Etc., etc., etc....

One may or may not have "made it," and "making it" wasn't easy, but one was at least given the key tool needed to "make it" and become a capitalist who can then, say, buy that "acre or two" from a later homesteader who is just starting out, and in so doing, expand one's own foothold as a capitalist, which, upon being given land, one instantly became.

Succinctly, our forebears understood that under capitalism, the way to help everyone succeed is to make everyone a capitalist and/or indispensable to (other) capitalists, thus the land grant rather than a gift of money. Did it work? I'd say it did. It produced the America that saw its industrial revolution not long after Jefferson's time, and that produced the gilded age by the late 19th century, the America that was the breadbasket of the world and the industrial powerhouse of the world certainly by the mid 20th century, if not before then.​

• 
  
  • After the end of the Homestead act, what's given isn't the thing needed to achieve one's own financial success through one's own efforts. "The system" instead begins to give that which defines the measure of financial success -- money itself and the necessities it buys -- but leaves recipients devoid of any means to achieve financial sufficiency absent the actual handout.
    
    In other words, the modern paradigm for UBI assuages our emotional need to feel good about helping folks and not letting them starve, go homeless and naked -- as well we should not allow those things to happen to our fellow men -- but it also ensures that those whom we help don't get so much help that they can likely join the ranks of capitalists and compete with existing capitalists.
    
    The thing is that in the present, it's not land that enables full participation in the capitalist, nee American, dream. These days, it's knowledge and information that does that. Why? Because this is the Information Age. Duh. Could it be any more plainly identified? The information that generates profits these days is the sort that can only be gained from education, education beyond what is offered in K-12 schools.
    
    So, even though we begrudgingly give folks food, housing and money, we ensure they get the one thing they must have to eventually not need the food, housing and money gifts. People regard schools as "all that's needed" in the quest to educate their kids, and, we as a society, allow our school system to function as a "babysitter" rather than an educator when and where parents abdicate or cannot in the first place provide the needed supplements to the information teachers attempt to impart to their kids.
    
    I can't say why some parents behave that way, but I know some do, and I know that to the extent that those who do are currently among the "left out" segment of society, neither their nor their kids situation will improve as long as they continue to do so.
• Basic Income in a Globalized Economy

Selected statements from the document and thoughts about them:​

• • "If nations are no longer able to perform their redistributive function because of their immersion in a global market, let us globalize redistribution."
    • Questions:
      • What structural economic reasons constrain or prohibit nations from performing this function?
        • Answer: The two noted on the prior pages: economic and political exigencies (some potentially avoidable and some plausibly unavoidable) resulting from transnational migration: the "race to the bottom" (term defined by them) and social/political heterogeneity. (re-read this section later to see if it still jibes)
      • Do they think national borders and the consequences of them be the drivers to the challenge noted in this section's heading?
      • Do they think that globalization itself or nationhood in an evolving global economy be the, that is, is the challenge transient or self solving?
  • "Globalized redistribution can of course hardly be expected to take the form of a complex, subtly structured welfare state that stipulates precisely what qualifies as a relevant need and the conditions under which, the way in which and the extent to which social solidarity will cover it. If it is ever to come into being, it will need to take the crude form of very simple benefits funded in a very simple way."
    • Question: So is a world of multiple and competing nation states doomed to inability to provide severally for the people who occupy the planet?
  • "Faced with this twofold challenge posed by trans-national migration, is there no better option than to mourn the epoch of tight borders, or perhaps to dream of a world freed of massive international inequalities and of the irresistible migration pressures they feed? Far from it. True, we must honestly recognize that generous solidarity is easier to imagine and implement in a closed homogeneous society cosily protected by robust borders against both opportunistic migration and ethnic heterogeneity. But having done that, we must actively explore and advocate three possible responses to the challenge we face."
    • Question: Might "tight national borders" mean not only "well controlled" but also "clearly defined"? Given the context, that seems plausible. Have to keep reading to find out....
    • Question: Why is the demise of tight borders necessarily a thing to mourn? Seems to me if the aim is the sufficiency and contentment of humanity, borders shouldn't matter. It's not as though what a human would or does need to be content varies by nation of residence. If the aim of sufficiency is inextricably tied to the nation state itself rather than its residents, well, then, yes, the demise of tight borders is something to mourn.
      
      [Keep an eye open for later in the paper indications of why they have the inherent assumption, given the subject matter and their paper's opening, the existence of tight national borders is something to retain or not retain in the context of achieving the objective of providing UBI for substantively everyone.]
• The Many Faces of Basic Income
• The Relative Cost of a Universal Basic Income and a Negative Income Tax
  
• Two redistributive proposals—universal basic income and stakeholder grants
  
• Redesigning Distribution: basic income and stakeholder grants as alternative cornerstones for a more egalitarian capitalism
  
• Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform
  
• HOW BIG IS BIG ENOUGH: WOULD THE BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE SATISFY THE UNEMPLOYED? (editorial)
• Democratizing Citizenship: Some Advantages of a Basic Income
  
• Basic Income: A simple and powerful idea for the twenty-first century
  
• The Pros and Cons of a Guaranteed National Income

Great post! My responses in bold black

• "If nations are no longer able to perform their redistributive function because of their immersion in a global market, let us globalize redistribution."
  • Questions:
    • What structural economic reasons constrain or prohibit nations from performing this function?
      • Answer: The two noted on the prior pages: economic and political exigencies (some potentially avoidable and some plausibly unavoidable) resulting from transnational migration: the "race to the bottom" (term defined by them) and social/political heterogeneity. (re-read this section later to see if it still jibes)
      • Agreed
    • Do they think national borders and the consequences of them be the drivers to the challenge noted in this section's heading?
    • The continued acceleration of terrorism and the response to it will make tighter borders a minimum, with sever restrictions on immigration, as Europe recent experience demonstrates.
    • Do they think that globalization itself or nationhood in an evolving global economy be the, that is, is the challenge transient or self solving?
    • Cant speak to how 'they' think, but *I* suspect that we will see a 'cantonized' global economy, with national economies integrated in a huge number of ways, but each nation running its own security and economic national interests as a priority over globalization efforts.

• "Globalized redistribution can of course hardly be expected to take the form of a complex, subtly structured welfare state that stipulates precisely what qualifies as a relevant need and the conditions under which, the way in which and the extent to which social solidarity will cover it. If it is ever to come into being, it will need to take the crude form of very simple benefits funded in a very simple way."
  • Question: So is a world of multiple and competing nation states doomed to inability to provide severally for the people who occupy the planet?
  • No, I dont think so because the spread of information is making the Third World population's expectations rise so much higher than previous generations. They will demand and work toward a higher standard of living, but within their own nations through reduction in corruption and enhanced efficiency, supplemented by global trade.

• "Faced with this twofold challenge posed by trans-national migration, is there no better option than to mourn the epoch of tight borders, or perhaps to dream of a world freed of massive international inequalities and of the irresistible migration pressures they feed? Far from it. True, we must honestly recognize that generous solidarity is easier to imagine and implement in a closed homogeneous society cosily protected by robust borders against both opportunistic migration and ethnic heterogeneity. But having done that, we must actively explore and advocate three possible responses to the challenge we face."
  • Question: Might "tight national borders" mean not only "well controlled" but also "clearly defined"? Given the context, that seems plausible. Have to keep reading to find out....
  • Question: Why is the demise of tight borders necessarily a thing to mourn? Seems to me if the aim is the sufficiency and contentment of humanity, borders shouldn't matter. It's not as though what a human would or does need to be content varies by nation of residence. If the aim of sufficiency is inextricably tied to the nation state itself rather than its residents, well, then, yes, the demise of tight borders is something to mourn. - The rise of terrorism mandates tight borders and that is what we will have, along with increased medical checks to prevent the spread of deadly global pandemics, etc. But there are still many ways to trade that pass through the tight borders efficiently enough, such as the use of trusted nations and corporations and also using thorough screenings of all imports.

 

[Never3ndr]

I like this idea as it will smooth out the transition from a wage based economy to a new technologically based barter economy that will arrive within 30 years if not much sooner.

Now before you start yelling 'But the lazy dindus wont work!' well, the way technology is advancing in such a way that very few people will work no matter how hard they try to find a job; there simply wont be enough jobs to employ more than about 15% of the population, if passed slave economies are any valid comparison economically. Just as there were some jobs one could not train a slave to do well, or a slave was too expensive to have them do those jobs, so too there will be jobs that an android wont do because of the same reasons. Of course the economy has changed quite a bit since 1860, but I think morphologically the analogy is valid.

Besides, what else do we have to guess with?

But this concept of a Universal Basic Income is the kind of thing we will need to salve the insecure who have alwayus thought of employment = financial security. In the coming technological Utopia we will have far deeper challenges, like finding a purpose to our lives when employment is not a realistic option..

There is absolutely no basis in which it is even remotely considerable that technological advancements equate to a lack of productivity or purpose in its citizen base. In fact, there IS precedent in technological advancements allowing for better productivity and MORE purpose in people's lives (everything from the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment indicate this). I mean seriously...the more automated we become the more monotonous tasks we eliminate. How many people grew up and dreamed of pushing a button on an assembly line or filing paperwork? Pretty much nobody. On the other hand, how many people wanted to explore space, be an artist, or help their community? I mean technology has allowed people to stop plowing fields by hand...did that mean that people stopped being productive when they got out of the fields? No. People will find ways to be productive and, in doing so, will find their purpose. As people tend to pay for useful services, people will pay them for their productivity. This is how our world works.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There is absolutely no basis in which it is even remotely considerable that technological advancements equate to a lack of productivity or purpose in its citizen base. In fact, there IS precedent in technological advancements allowing for better productivity and MORE purpose in people's lives (everything from the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment indicate this). I mean seriously...the more automated we become the more monotonous tasks we eliminate. How many people grew up and dreamed of pushing a button on an assembly line or filing paperwork? Pretty much nobody. On the other hand, how many people wanted to explore space, be an artist, or help their community? I mean technology has allowed people to stop plowing fields by hand...did that mean that people stopped being productive when they got out of the fields? No. People will find ways to be productive and, in doing so, will find their purpose. As people tend to pay for useful services, people will pay them for their productivity. This is how our world works.

You are presenting an image of placid utopia, and I agree that technological utopia is coming, but it has its dark side; drastically reduced incomes, a perception of purposelessness due to lack of viable careers, and the loss of government revenues from taxation.

If we all ahd part time jobs that paid all out bills and made us feel peachy keen, that would still leave the government with smaller tax base and resulting revenue streams and the consumer market would be less than half of what it was before. Unlike most of the technological innovations over the last 500 years, the new Digital Age tech is not producing the jobs like the old tech did,in fact it is a net job negative impact as even older menial jobs become robotized.

Lets say you can grow your own food and make your own cloths and shoes; how do you pay your mortgage? How do you pay the various property taxes?

 

[Never3ndr]

There is absolutely no basis in which it is even remotely considerable that technological advancements equate to a lack of productivity or purpose in its citizen base. In fact, there IS precedent in technological advancements allowing for better productivity and MORE purpose in people's lives (everything from the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment indicate this). I mean seriously...the more automated we become the more monotonous tasks we eliminate. How many people grew up and dreamed of pushing a button on an assembly line or filing paperwork? Pretty much nobody. On the other hand, how many people wanted to explore space, be an artist, or help their community? I mean technology has allowed people to stop plowing fields by hand...did that mean that people stopped being productive when they got out of the fields? No. People will find ways to be productive and, in doing so, will find their purpose. As people tend to pay for useful services, people will pay them for their productivity. This is how our world works.

You are presenting an image of placid utopia, and I agree that technological utopia is coming, but it has its dark side; drastically reduced incomes, a perception of purposelessness due to lack of viable careers, and the loss of government revenues from taxation.

If we all ahd part time jobs that paid all out bills and made us feel peachy keen, that would still leave the government with smaller tax base and resulting revenue streams and the consumer market would be less than half of what it was before. Unlike most of the technological innovations over the last 500 years, the new Digital Age tech is not producing the jobs like the old tech did,in fact it is a net job negative impact as even older menial jobs become robotized.

Lets say you can grow your own food and make your own cloths and shoes; how do you pay your mortgage? How do you pay the various property taxes?

I'm simply going to point towards history when we have experienced previous periods of large technological advances...when, ever, did the population cease to be productive? The only thing that technological advances mark is GREATER productivity, GREATER purpose.

Let us take our latest technological innovation...the computer. Now, for sure, this has eliminated some jobs. However...has this led to more or less opportunities for people? The answer is clearly MORE. Even when it has eliminated a lot of administrative jobs or lessened the need for in-house people to analyze / research your company (now you have programs that do that), computers have led to a far larger range of tech jobs and have introduced SEVERAL whole new job markets. The same was true when we moved out of agriculture (due to technological advances) and INTO the industrial revolution. At no time in human history has technological advances done anything other than INCREASE the population's productivity and INCREASE the opportunities for people to find their purpose.

I don't know what sort of obscure, fictional material you are getting your world view from, but history clearly shows that the picture you paint is a picture of fantasy.

Edit: I noticed you are under the impression that our digital age is taking jobs rather than generating them. I'm pretty sure (although I don't have the stats) that this is false. The reason...you point towards robotics doing the work of human as evidence that we are running out of jobs. How so? When we created machines to better perform our farming we saw people move into a new job market(since they didn't have to till the field all day)...industry! The same is true here. Many manufacturing jobs are either being automated or outsourced. The outsourced jobs are obviously not eliminated and the automated jobs simply allow people to do the slew of other things that computers and robotics have opened up for humanity. Everything from data theory, application development, digital design, online marketing, programming, esports, digital marketing, social media networking, IT, information security, I could go on and on and on. There are tons of things that has been opened up with the advent of our technology...and the same will be true of future tech. The only ones that will suffer from technological advances are those too stubborn to adapt to it.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There is absolutely no basis in which it is even remotely considerable that technological advancements equate to a lack of productivity or purpose in its citizen base. In fact, there IS precedent in technological advancements allowing for better productivity and MORE purpose in people's lives (everything from the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment indicate this). I mean seriously...the more automated we become the more monotonous tasks we eliminate. How many people grew up and dreamed of pushing a button on an assembly line or filing paperwork? Pretty much nobody. On the other hand, how many people wanted to explore space, be an artist, or help their community? I mean technology has allowed people to stop plowing fields by hand...did that mean that people stopped being productive when they got out of the fields? No. People will find ways to be productive and, in doing so, will find their purpose. As people tend to pay for useful services, people will pay them for their productivity. This is how our world works.

You are presenting an image of placid utopia, and I agree that technological utopia is coming, but it has its dark side; drastically reduced incomes, a perception of purposelessness due to lack of viable careers, and the loss of government revenues from taxation.

If we all ahd part time jobs that paid all out bills and made us feel peachy keen, that would still leave the government with smaller tax base and resulting revenue streams and the consumer market would be less than half of what it was before. Unlike most of the technological innovations over the last 500 years, the new Digital Age tech is not producing the jobs like the old tech did,in fact it is a net job negative impact as even older menial jobs become robotized.

Lets say you can grow your own food and make your own cloths and shoes; how do you pay your mortgage? How do you pay the various property taxes?

I'm simply going to point towards history when we have experienced previous periods of large technological advances...when, ever, did the population cease to be productive? The only thing that technological advances mark is GREATER productivity, GREATER purpose.

Let us take our latest technological innovation...the computer. Now, for sure, this has eliminated some jobs. However...has this led to more or less opportunities for people? The answer is clearly MORE. Even when it has eliminated a lot of administrative jobs or lessened the need for in-house people to analyze / research your company (now you have programs that do that), computers have led to a far larger range of tech jobs and have introduced SEVERAL whole new job markets. The same was true when we moved out of agriculture (due to technological advances) and INTO the industrial revolution. At no time in human history has technological advances done anything other than INCREASE the population's productivity and INCREASE the opportunities for people to find their purpose.

I don't know what sort of obscure, fictional material you are getting your world view from, but history clearly shows that the picture you paint is a picture of fantasy.

Edit: I noticed you are under the impression that our digital age is taking jobs rather than generating them. I'm pretty sure (although I don't have the stats) that this is false. The reason...you point towards robotics doing the work of human as evidence that we are running out of jobs. How so? When we created machines to better perform our farming we saw people move into a new job market(since they didn't have to till the field all day)...industry! The same is true here. Many manufacturing jobs are either being automated or outsourced. The outsourced jobs are obviously not eliminated and the automated jobs simply allow people to do the slew of other things that computers and robotics have opened up for humanity. Everything from data theory, application development, digital design, online marketing, programming, esports, digital marketing, social media networking, IT, information security, I could go on and on and on. There are tons of things that has been opened up with the advent of our technology...and the same will be true of future tech. The only ones that will suffer from technological advances are those too stubborn to adapt to it.

OK, lets talk specifics here. Lets compare modern machine turret lathe jobs with the old cotton mill weaving jobs.

In the 18th century the use of machines made spinning thread and making cloth much faster, but it required training and experience to do that job well. All jobs that come early in a new tech field do. But as improvements came to the machinery and to the process to make it more efficient, the cotton mill owners did not cut their staff so much as they expanded their production. They had a global market that was insatiable for cheap cotton clothing. But how did the cotton weaving mills affect labor? It made it more efficient and profitable. A man that knew how to manage a textile mill could work his whole life and his sons and grandsons could learn it as well and be prosperous.

Now lets look at a turret lathe operator circa WW2. That job required some math, some ability to think three dimensionally and to read and update ones skills without oversight and/or prodding. LTV in Grande Praire Texas had thousands of turret lathe operators in 1950, but as the machines got more automated, the number of actual machine operators dropped to a few hundred, now it is all automated lathes run by a single set up guy. All those thousands of jobs are gone replaced by three jobs; a computer programmer, a lathe set up guy and a manager. This guy had a one generation job, and succeeding generations were a shrinking number of people.

Today we have digital products that have no material to them. A Droid app comes out today and its code involves maybe three people, and they hardly need any sales force,management, etc. The Digital Age is creating new industries but they are producing a fraction of the jobs like the old tech did and they dont last half as long. Professionals of every industry but a very few today, the new people entering them need to be able to change their careers their products and their direction on a month to month basis or risk finding a pink slip in their email and no alternative career.

The new tech today is virtually independent of human effort to make it, maintain it and install it. Robotics will make human labor obsolete in all but a few marginal professions that require a human touch and I'm not sure about them either as the Turing Test gets trampled into the dustbin of history.

That makes it a jobless economy.

 

[Never3ndr]

The new tech today is virtually independent of human effort to make it, maintain it and install it.

I'm just going to highlight this because it highlights your misunderstanding of tech. Let me be clear. This statement I've isolated is 100% false. It takes A TON of effort to create working programs / robotics etc (I honestly don't know much about robotics but can speak semi-freely about the programming side of the house), it tends to take even more effort to maintain it, and as far as installing it...well that can be about as fun as trying to chop a tree down with a butter knife. You just don't understand modern technology which is why you have such a gross misunderstanding of it.

To take your example of the lathe, your logic only holds up if this job is considered in a vacuum. However, the job market is not conducted in a vacuum. If what you said was the only thing considered then we should see abnormally high levels of unemployment...like 80%+ (maybe more when thousands are being replaced by three people). However, hat wasn't the case...anywhere. Jobs get outdated, jobs get created...it is the ebb and flow of the job market. If you can actually indicate a point in history where technology advanced and we saw unbelievably high levels of unemployment then hey, I'll take that point and consider it. Until then it truly seems that you are basing your judgment on tech more on your biases and misconceptions rather than on research based findings, historical examples, or the like.

 

[320 Years of History]

Notes continued from where I left off...

• Basic Income in a Globalized Economy

Selected statements from the document and thoughts about them:

• "If nations are no longer able to perform their redistributive function because of their immersion in a global market, let us globalize redistribution."
  • Questions:
    • What structural economic reasons constrain or prohibit nations from performing this function?
      • Answer: The two noted on the prior pages: economic and political exigencies (some potentially avoidable and some plausibly unavoidable) resulting from transnational migration: the "race to the bottom" (term defined by them) and social/political heterogeneity. (re-read this section later to see if it still jibes)
    • Do they think national borders and the consequences of them be the drivers to the challenge noted in this section's heading?
    • Do they think that globalization itself or nationhood in an evolving global economy be the, that is, is the challenge transient or self solving?
• "Globalized redistribution can of course hardly be expected to take the form of a complex, subtly structured welfare state that stipulates precisely what qualifies as a relevant need and the conditions under which, the way in which and the extent to which social solidarity will cover it. If it is ever to come into being, it will need to take the crude form of very simple benefits funded in a very simple way."
  • Question: So is a world of multiple and competing nation states doomed to inability to provide severally for the people who occupy the planet?
• "Faced with this twofold challenge posed by trans-national migration, is there no better option than to mourn the epoch of tight borders, or perhaps to dream of a world freed of massive international inequalities and of the irresistible migration pressures they feed? Far from it. True, we must honestly recognize that generous solidarity is easier to imagine and implement in a closed homogeneous society cosily protected by robust borders against both opportunistic migration and ethnic heterogeneity. But having done that, we must actively explore and advocate three possible responses to the challenge we face."
  • Question: Might "tight national borders" mean not only "well controlled" but also "clearly defined"? Given the context, that seems plausible. Have to keep reading to find out....
  • Question: Why is the demise of tight borders necessarily a thing to mourn? Seems to me if the aim is the sufficiency and contentment of humanity, borders shouldn't matter. It's not as though what a human would or does need to be content varies by nation of residence. If the aim of sufficiency is inextricably tied to the nation state itself rather than its residents, well, then, yes, the demise of tight borders is something to mourn.
    
    [Keep an eye open for later in the paper indications of why they have the inherent assumption, given the subject matter and their paper's opening, the existence of tight national borders is something to retain or not retain in the context of achieving the objective of providing UBI for substantively everyone.]

"...the political philosopher Thomas Pogge (Yale University) has been arguing for a “global resources dividend”, to be funded out of a tax on the use or sale of the natural resources of the earth (see Pogge 1994, 1995, 2002: ch.8). The underlying idea is that the populations of the countries that happen to shelter these resources have no sound ethical claim to the exclusive appropriation of their value, and that part of this value must enable the poor of the world to satisfy their basic needs. While noncommittal about the best way of achieving this objective, Pogge (2005) acknowledges that “something like a Global Basic Income may well be part of the best plan”. Many others have come, often more explicitly, to a simple proposal of a universal basic income, usually inspired by the generous desire to substantially alleviate world poverty with a simple tool at a reasonable expense for the rich of the planet and/or by the need to make good use of the (supposedly) large revenues generated by taxes that may have a rationale of their own, typically the Tobin tax on international financial transactions."

• Sounds reasonable; however, this whole idea challenges the idea of property rights. In and of itself, I don't have an issue with wholesale revisions to our current, and long existing ideas about property ownership...Indeed, that may not be a terrible thing to have happen...clearly there are pros and cons when the ida is viewed in comparison with and to what we are all used to. Even so, I suspect there's a workable way to effect such a fundamental paradigm shift, but only if we can also eliminate or vastly subordinate greed and it's cousin envy among humanity. That's going to be no mean feat, yet that it isn't is not a reason not to try.

The most plausible interpretation, however, is neither in terms of cooperative justice (how should the cost of producing a public good be shared among those who benefit from it?) nor in terms of reparative justice (how should the costs that make up a public harm be shared among those who cause it?), but in terms of distributive justice: how is the value of scarce resources to be distributed among those entitled to them?

• How does the idea of UBI, as remarked above, imply a paradigm shift in the ideas of property ownership and also "fit" with the concept of entitlement to anything? The idea of UBI seems, thus far, to imply that everyone is entitled to all resources the Earth has to offer. (I have no issue with that, but it's different from our current economic SOP.) Similarly, the idea of "resource value," an idea that's inextricably linked to property ownership, seem incongruously introduced here....the value of a thing or service is relative to the user's need or non-need-based desire to posses/use it. Very few things, if any, have inherent value. Even a glass of water is of zero (or a tiny bit more than zero) present value to one who's just drunk their fill; whereas a couple ounces of water is worth a lot to a "parched" person.
  
  The very idea of UBI (as I understand it at this point in my investigation) flies in the face of and diametrically and necessarily opposes the idea of intrinsic value. Accordingly, how can anyone in a UBI system use resource value to allocate resources? The only plausible way is to constrain UBI principles to selected resources. If one is to re-apply the essence of what pre-20th century proponents of UBI sought/advocated, the critical resource to today distribute is knowledge and information and the skills for critically and accurately processing/analyzing that information for decision making. That in turn suggests that the income aspect of UBI isn't at all what needs to be given, and that in turn makes me ask, "Why is the matter of income at all a factor in UBI concepts?" I think, for now, that UBI should be renamed UBK, "K" for knowledge, or the "I" changed to "information."
  
  [Perhaps the authors will clarify this later in the paper? Have to wait and see....]
  

Parting thoughts re: this paper:
The rest of the paper deals mainly with how to fund some sort of UBI. All funding methodologies discussed are transfers of cash among countries. That's all well and good, but I haven't found anything that addresses -- not addressed poorly, not addressed well, total "silence" is what I found...that's either because my questions are too stupid for the authors to have foreseen or the authors chose not to address them even knowing they are legit --- the concerns or questions I asked during my read of the earlier sections of the paper. I find myself, after finishing the paper, not opposed to the UBI concept, but not convinced that it is anything more than a good idea/intention that may not be implementable.

Moving on to the next paper....maybe the questions/concerns I have will be answered in one of them....