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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 14 March 2016 08:02AM

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Comment author: Viliam 15 March 2016 08:02:56AM *  3 points [-]

Wealth is produced, and the money do not disappear (does it actually? my understanding of economy is pretty basic) when you give it out since they spend it as consumer the same way the people you take it from would do.

The money usually does not literally disappear, but what happens if you have too much money in circulation and not enough things to buy is that the money loses value, i.e. things become more expensive. (Attempts to fix this problem by regulating prices typically result in literally empty shops after the few cheap things are sold.) It is related to inflation, but the whole story is complicated.

I don't see anything "running out" in the few socialist countries out there.

There are many countries in eastern Europe that once had "socialist" in their names and now don't. And they happen to be among the poorest ones in Europe. The "running out of money" meant that over decades their standards of living were getting far behind the western Europe.

You probably mean Sweden (people who talk about "socialist" countries not running out of money usually mean Sweden, because it's quite difficult to find another example). I don't know much about Sweden to explain what happened there, but I suspect they have must less "socialism" than the former Soviet bloc.

(For the purposes of a rational debate it would probably be better to stop using words like "socialism" and instead talk about more specific things, such as: high taxes, planned economy, mandatory employment, censorship of media, dictatorship of one political party, universal health care, basic income, etc. These are things typically described as "socialist" but they don't have to appear together.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 15 March 2016 11:57:15AM 0 points [-]

Basic income is historically no socialist idea. It's a liberal idea. Milton Friedman came up with it under the name of negative taxation.

Billionaire Götz Werner did a lot to promote the concept. In Germany the CDU (right-wing) politician Dieter Althaus spoke for it. YCombinator who invests into research in it is also no socialist institution.

Socialism is about workers rights. People who don't work but just receive basic income aren't workers. The unemployed aren't union members. Unions generally want that employers take care of their employees and believe that employeers should pay a living wage and that it's not the role of the government to pay low income people a basic income.