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enoonsti comments on On Walmart, And Who Bears Responsibility For the Poor - LessWrong
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No. You can't. One example I've stressed is that your unemployment benefits don't help employees who wish to go on strike. Union dues can be decreased via Basic Income because unions won't have to worry about strike funds anymore. Even if you're not officially unionized, you know your coworkers get paid a Basic Income each month, and they know that you know. This simplicity-induced transparency can help you persuade/guilt-trip your co-workers to go on strike with you over, say, safer workplaces or shorter hours. And going on strike is an easier sell than getting everyone to quit for "unemployed-only" welfare (which, as I've stressed, your coworkers may not even end up receiving), especially if your coworkers are getting paid quite handsomely. After all, we're not just talking about Walmart employees going on strike.
Long story short: Basic Income subsidizes employee leverage. And as Aaron Swartz emphasized, it can even help encourage employees to become entrepreneurs. Your repeated argument that Basic Income is subsidizing Walmart reminds me of this psychicpebbles video :p
Think of the aforementioned fight over food stamps today. Heck, many Americans don't even know it's called SNAP now, and SNAP advocates have to actively campaign to teach Americans what recipients receive. By contrast, Basic Income won't need active campaigning once adopted: everyone will be passively reminded each month via their monthly payments. Furthermore, the endowment effect (yes I see the criticism section at that link) makes it much less likely that everyone will support a politician's decision to cut their Basic Income monthly payments.
But only if society cares to reduce the costs! Again, people don't even know the foods stamps program is now called SNAP. And they think recipients are all like Jason Greenslate.
To be fair, there are practical bottlenecks in the implementation of a basic income, so I do support already-existing welfare programs. It's just that I also point out the weakness of those programs. I'm not much fun at parties.
Sure, but employees could threaten to quit their job. Anyway, how much money is currently locked as strike funds?
So can unemployment benefits: If you business fails, you have a safety net. Sure, you would have to give yourself and your employees a wage while your business is still unproductive, but that could be dealt with subsidies specifically targeted at startups.
Appeal to ridicule
If the government started to give money to everybody who turns 18 and doesn't work I suppose that people would tend to notice.
The same endowment effect applies to taxes which affect most of the population. When the government proposes tax raises there is always some opposition, but this doesn't prevent tax raises from occurring from time to time.
Food stamps are considered something extremely low status which only the filthy poor and social parasites would ever accept. Most people don't care about the issue except as a social cost.
If threatening employers with the words "We'll quit" is all that's needed, then why do employees bother with strikes in the first place? Action gives power to words. As for your (rhetorical?) question, I'm not sure I follow. Non-unionized employees certainly don't have a strike fund.
Hackers' hobbies and experimentation technically don't count as startups, even though they can lead to official companies in due time. Basic income can help support such experimentation. Furthermore, subsidies targeted specifically to startups can be opposed by established businesses as government meddling.
When an average American interviews for a job, which of the two is more likely on his mind: the wage, or the tax implications of the new job? Tax reformers face the uphill battle of a public perplexed by the complexity of taxation, as well those who feel protected from tax increases via possible deductions and loopholes. By contrast, an income stream is an easier thing to grasp. If everyone is given this income stream, any attempts to cut this income stream won't be met with "some opposition." It will be met with widespread opposition.
But your "lazy-only"... I mean, "unemployed-only" solution won't fly because it will be demonized in the manner that you demonize SNAP here:
Whereas many SNAP recipients actually are employed, your "unemployed-only" solution actively discourages work. Therefore, your belief that the problems of targeted welfare "could be reduced to the point of irrelevance" seem, to put it mildly, a bit optimistic to me.
Basic income does not actively discourage work. Instead, it gives people leverage to choose their work if they so desire. Yes, I agree it is, to put it mildly, optimistic to expect adoption of basic income in the near future. However, I'm in it for the long-run.... unless, of course, someone convinces me that basic income is a bad idea. You're currently not succeeding in this regard.
Appeal to authority
Because they would be in serious troubles if they quit and don't have another form of income.
So either these hackers are unemployed, therefore they would be getting unemployment benefits if they existed, or they are employed, hence they can fund themselves with their salary. Until they can find an investor, of course.
Nope. Cash from unemployment benefit is indistinguishable from cash from another form of income, unlike food stamps which automatically signal you as "poor" any time you use them to buy something.
Not any more than basic income does.
Off topic.
You are not helping to keep the level of this discussion high.
Back from my Thanksgiving break. Delighted to see another turkey.
So what you're saying is that your "unemployed-only" solution will make the words "We'll quit" into a more credible threat, and employers will meet their demands because employers are too stupid to call their bluff? You do recognize there are benefits to being employed other than the wage, right? Health care, networking, friends, knowledge, experience, etc? And, as I suggested before, what if the employees are paid well above your "unemployed-only" solution but wish to strike for shorter hours or a safer workplace?
My great-grandfather was on the receiving end of a strike in 1940, and he lasted for two months without blinking an eye. If you tried your simple threat of "We'll quit and go live off the benefits" on him, it would have come across like this scene from Cable Guy.
One of my contentions is that basic income has a much better chance of coming into existence than your solution, although I'll hedge this notion with Milton Friedman's Negative Income Tax discussed below.
Nope. We're not talking about signalling "I'm poor" to the cashier at the supermarket. We're talking at the level of policy. You know, Washington D.C. and all that. By the way, maybe you should have looked at a SNAP card before going all scarlet letter on me. Look at this mountain of shame. And here's a film about the people who carry such cards. Maybe the film will help you stop calling them "filthy poor and social parasites." Even Tyler Cowen praises SNAP.
Randomized control trials (here's one for example) indicate that basic income encourages work. RCTs often inspire hipster cynics to complain: "Oh, they continued working just because they knew the RCT would end. If you guaranteed them basic income for life, they would quit their jobs." Of course, such complaints are merely handwaving, unlike the empirical evidence just presented.
Are there any RCTs for your idea? If no, why? As it turns out, the Negative Income Tax RCTs decades ago were probably the closest to your idea, since it tapers off as you earn more (similar to Viliam_Bur's suggestion in this thread). The results inspired mixed reactions, with many critics claiming a drop in labor. This paper tries to sort out the mess.
Jodie T. Allen of the Nixon administration dealt with the NIT RCTs firsthand, and she immediately noticed some practical problems. For example, just like the EITC today mistakenly gives out billions of dollars to technically ineligible recipients, the NIT will probably mistakenly give out many billions more and turn the IRS into an even bigger bureaucracy as it deals with millions of ever-changing recipients. You seem quite naive to such administrative issues, per your professed belief to Viliam_Bur:
As I've stated before, basic income has its implementation problems. But it's nowhere near the level of complexity of your idea, which you insist is not that complex, because you haven't spent much time actually thinking about it. This brings me to my main complaint against you.
On topic, because I'm actually the one keeping the level of this discussion high, just like in past encounters. See, when I pointed you to this article last year, I discovered that you didn't actually read it, and you went right back to ridiculing cryonics advocates. Then when you gave this half-assed one-liner above, I realized you probably do this with every subject. Just to double-check, I provided more links. As far as I can tell, the only ones you click on are the ones you judge to be an assault to your character, because those links are easier to process. So tell me: why should I continue to provide links if all you're going to do is respond with half-assed one-liners? The only link you've provided thus far is an off-topic Wikipedia entry.
I understand you may be pressed for time, so instead of inefficiently talking past each other, let's just exchange some links to books of our respective ideas. I'll go first: here's a huge anthology of Basic Income research. Your turn.