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[GavJ]

The few people receiving  lot of benefits would receive less, but the lot of people receiving none...would receive some.

The whole post and argument boils down to this.

The fundamental flaw in this logic is that the people who need the benefits are the ones receiving lots of benefits, generally. So the ones you're hurting are those most in need.
And the ones receiving no benefits tend to be the ones that are best off in society. So you're helping those least in need.

Robbing from the poor to give to the rich = the diametric opposite of what this country needs. Which is why this is a huge fail.





IF you can raise a lot more money, enough to provide the people in most need with what they need to live (i.e. a hell of a lot more than $416 a month. You need enough for simple nutritious food AND basic housing AND medical), then basic income can work fairly.

And that may be possible. I'm open-ears to plans on how to raise the money. But nothing short of that is ethically acceptable, period.

But  (going back to the specific example we're talking about, don't get confused and accuse me of "changing my goalposts") my program is "only feeding" 40 million people, whereas your program is "feeding, clothing and housing" only 12 million people...while leaving the other 28 million starving.

i have no idea where you're getting these numbers from. Who are these alleged 28 million people who are starving yet ineligible for food stamps or general assistance or WIC or any other relevant program?

And even if we assume these alleged numbers are true, nothing about this justifies you handing out 89% of the money at hand to NEITHER of those groups, but instead to the other 310 million people in America and thus screwing over all of your cited 40 million in need.

At the very most, you should be arguing to redistribute all program money across all program eligible people. Not the whole populace. Which would still be a terrible argument, since replacing surgical methods with shotgun blasts is inherently inefficient. But at least it would sound roughly sane, unlike basic income for ALL with no supplemental cash.

[LordBucket]

Being an unemployed student (there's no friggin' jobs out here in the outback ) this Basic Income system seems to only hurt me.

How so? Basic income specifically addresses your situation*, while the current welfare systems (in the US anyway) don't. So long as you're a citizen and meet whatever the age minimum is set at (if there is one) then you'd get the $5000/yr.

Whether you have medical issues or not is irrelevant. Whether you're employed is irrelevant. You still get that $5000/yr. Everybody does.

(*My phrasing is ambiguous. To clarify: yes, you would need to be a citizen of the country in which basic income is implemented. A basic income implemented in country A would not give money to citizens of country B. Please understand the the intended meaning rather than playing semantic games. You being an unemployed student...you would still receive that money.)

My "solution" (which is more just a speculative solution to a future problem, I wouldn't want to implement it now) at the very least doesn't require eliminating medical coverage for those on low/no income.

Can we clarify this? The "your solution" that I was referring to was

I would imagine as automation is phased in, it would be best to reduce the working hours of everyone, rather than have some people work full time and others completely unemployed.

...reducing working hours such that everybody can have a little bit of work rather than having some people working 40 hours a week while lots of people are unable to find work at all.


I already acknowledged this as a valid solution to the technological obsolescence issue:

That's certainly a valid solution. It would work. There are other solutions that would probably also work. For example, somebody mentioned basic income schemes earlier in the thread.

Why would you not want to implement that now? I routinely read about recent college grads still not able to get even jobs at McDonald's fully 1-2 years after graduating. Shifting to a 30 hour work week would help solve a good number of those sorts of problems in the short term. I don't think it's a long term solution to technological unemployment, but it could certainly mitigate a sizable portion of problems we're having right now.

In your post you linked to, half the links are to Wikipedia, helpfully informing us of what Earth and New York is.

Do you realize how much you're exaggerating? Read your own post that I'm replying to. Read the section of my post that you're quoting. Look at page 7 of the thread. I gave 27 links.

Half of them were not to wikipedia informing you of the earth and new york are. Two of them were citing the source for the population density numbers I was giving.

2 is not equal to half of 27.

Your argument on resources is that technology will improve to extract more resources, and that non-economically-viable resource deposits will become available in the future.

That was one aspect, yes. There was more to it. For example: the way "reserves" is defined only includes known deoposits. If you already know where 50 years worth of something is, there isn't much financial incentive to go look for more. "50 years supply" does not mean "in 50 years we run out." It means "out of an unknown quantity, we've located 50 years worth." The original projections were that oil would have run out ~40 years ago. And yet here we are 40 years later with 50 years worth of known reserves. The original estimates were at a minimum off by 90 years, and there's no particular reason to assume that the the current 50 years figure are magically the end because we've magically looked in all the places where oil is and none of the places we haven't looked have any oil. And...even if that's so

Now, yes, I'm focusing on oil in this particular response. But these issues largely do apply to other materials even if the specific numbers are different. And in the case of some of those other materials, like platinum...it's really not a huge problem even if they do run out. Platinum is not a terribly important material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum

"Platinum is used in catalytic converters, laboratory equipment, electrical contacts and electrodes, platinum resistance thermometers, dentistry equipment, and jewellery. "

We're not talking end of the world if this stuff runs out.

Your point on recycling is contradicted by the very link your provided.

Which point? I made a couple, and provided a couple links. Your quote does not specify.

vertical farming now, despite the fact that "A commercial high-ris
farm such as 'The Vertical Farm' has never been built".

...did you not see the picture I provided in that post? Vertical farming exists regrdless of whether or not specifically "high rise" implementations do.

 * Example in chicago
 * Example in Tokyo
 * Example on Miyagi
 * Example in Korea

Again, in case you missed it, here's a picture of one:

[LordBucket]

i have no idea where you're getting these numbers from. Who are these alleged 28 million people
who are starving yet ineligible for food stamps or general assistance or WIC or any other relevant program?

I'm obviously wasting my time. You're not even reading my posts. I can't expect you to understand things you don't read.

current U-6 unemployment rates, it's at 12.6% right now. Some quick math...319 million in the US, that's  40 million...whereas only 12.8 million people are receiving any welfare program. That leaves  ~28 million people who are not receiving money from these programs at all.

[GavJ]

And you aren't reading mine.

Who are these alleged 28 million people who are starving yet ineligible for food stamps or general assistance or WIC or any other relevant program?

"Currently not receiving" is not the same thing as "ineligible."
We do not need to dramatically rewrite our welfare laws just because people aren't applying to things they could already get help from.
You need to provide numbers on how many of these people are ineligible to make the argument you want to make.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

This is a pretty trippy discussion, man. I thought we were talking about money and figured this would devolve into a discussion of fiat currencies. Not whatever this is. I swear we had the post-scarcity topic and the transhuman topic for this line of debate.

[GavJ]

For example, food stamps eligibility:

Households may have $2,000 in countable resources, such as a bank account, or $3250 in countable resources if at least one person is age 60 or older, or is disabled.  However, certain resources are NOT counted, such as a home and lot

If you don't qualify for that, then you have thousands in the bank and really aren't starving, now are you? Which is sort of the whole point... (note that families with young children might seem oppressed by a $2000 bank limit, however such families will qualify for WIC instead, which has an income qualification but not an assets one)

Presumably, the majority of those 28 million people are either:
1) Not qualifying for programs, because they have plenty in savings from their last job and don't need assistance (so who cares?), or
2) Are ignorant of programs available, the solution for which is quite simply better education about programs, not stealing 90% of their potential money out from under them and handing it out to employed homeowners and guys on yachts!

"Oh hey dude. Instead of giving you some simple instructions on how to collect the full amount of money you qualify for, I'm going to give you a tiny fraction of it, and then remove any possibility of you ever getting the rest. It's for your own good" FFS, we aren't that dumb, lordbucket. If you want a system that lets you lounge around and play videogames and read without going to work, just say so. I won't judge -- I don't think work should be a universal given, either. But don't try to hide it amongst bullshit arguments for how it "helps the poor" to reduce the amount of money available to the poor, because then you're being selfish at their expense rather than through a brave new social plan, and that I will judge you for.

[Tomcost]

Well, this has definitely degraded into a discussion where, rather than providing constructive arguments, each aprt s just trying to destroy the other. Wouldn't it be better to stop now? Or at least come back later?

[Helgoland]

PTW. Even though watching the posts would be vastly more interesting if people could just STFU about post-scarcity.

[Angle]

*Waves his ideas in the air*

[Graknorke]

Well, this has definitely degraded into a discussion where, rather than providing constructive arguments, each aprt s just trying to destroy the other. Wouldn't it be better to stop now? Or at least come back later?

This is how Bay12 discussion inevitably end up if left for long enough.
Always.

[alway]

PTW. Even though watching the posts would be vastly more interesting if people didn't post PTW to necro a 2-week dead thread as an excuse to post aggressive snark about what they think people shouldn't discuss.

Because as this ironic post demonstrates, it's really annoying.


But really, what did you expect? Money isn't all that interesting aside from the obvious facts about it, and those generally don't make for good discussion outside of posting links to more in-depth explanations, like so: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money

[Helgoland]

Two weeks old? I didn't see that, sorry...