StrangeSox

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 22, 2013 -> 08:59 AM) I again say the same thing to you, while this favors your party now, there will be a day it doesn't...and then you'll be crying that the minority party has no power. The only reason you are for this, is because you're a democrat. If the republicans were in the senate majority right now and did this, you'd be singing a different tune. And you know it. No, I don't "know it." I know that I believe elected majorities should be able to govern, even if I don't agree with those majorities. Our presidential system has far too many veto points and shields elected officials from responsibility far too much. It's actually possible for people to take a principled stance. And you know it.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 22, 2013 -> 08:55 AM) I'm not sure how good of an idea this is, though. When the day comes that the opposing party is in power, you won't be as happy about this. Elected majorities should be able to govern. If Americans elect a majority right-wing Senate and a right-wing President, their chosen elected officials should be able to enact the policies and appoint the people that they want.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 08:22 PM) I can see it now, the Big Mother Bureaucracy presiding over its little baby bureaucracies. "Guys, we got letters to mail", and an army of millions to do it. Unless you would actually support getting rid of the other bureaucracies (which you'll say now you agree with) but I know you wouldnt throw a federal worker on his ass if youre life depended on it. Lets not kid ourselves, you dont want to get rid of anything government. For as much as you insult other people, you seem to lack basic reading comprehension capabilities. I have already said, multiple times, that a ubi would combine various existing programs.

The bottom 40% have negative net wealth.

I pointed out that those bureaucracies would be consolidated, and that contrary to your insistence, the website for Obama care isn't representative of the entirety of government. I can't believe you actually made that second argument in good faith because it's so silly.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 06:38 PM) These are the same people who cant make a website. The people who couldn't make a website were several private contractors. The government currently has multiple programs that mail out checks (or vouchers, or debit cards, etc.) to millions of people. IRS refunds, food stamps, housing funds, contractor payments, payroll, etc. I don't know why you think healthcare.gov is representative of the entirety of the concept of government. edit: the Medicaid (ie government) parts of the PPACA are working pretty well because it's much less of a mess than interfacing with a bunch of private insurers.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 05:56 PM) Youre not even counting the absolutely massive bureaucracy requied to administer it. A check mailed out to every citizen with no means-testing wouldn't require that much of a bureaucracy. I'd be substantially less cumbersome to combine the various social programs into one.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 04:52 PM) By the way, 15k times 300M (population of the country) is $4.5T. That is far more than the entire annual national budget. Tax rates would have to skyrocket to far higher rates than we have ever seen to cover it. Far, far better to make the minimum wage more livable, make sure you continue welfare and UE programs, and SDI/disability. And do more for health care, which is underway. Basically most of these things are already done, though minimum wage should be improved and PPACA needs work. Possibly. It's an obviously pie-in-the-sky idealistic position which has zero chance of ever being a political possibility in this country. But I don't necessarily have a problem with skyrocketing taxes. We've got an enormous amount of wealth in this country, but skyrocketing inequality. There's more than enough wealth to guarantee every person a basic income, to eliminate poverty in this country, if we choose to do so.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 04:12 PM) Where does the money come to fund this? Why not just get rid of taxes? The money would come from taxation, I thought that was obvious. Getting rid of taxes would be quite the boon for the wealthy, but it wouldn't help the poor and middle class all that much. Neither would the global collapse of society. edit: I also don't see how eliminating taxes would do anything to change the balance of power in the labor market, either.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 04:03 PM) The wiki link mentioned that the fact that the study was temporary might have had an affect. If you told people that they would suddenly get $15K every year for the rest of their life, I would think many would quit working or at least reduce their working hours. A higher percentage than what the study showed. Some might quit, if their jobs were s*** and didn't pay much more than $15k in the first place, or their employers treated them poorly. An employer would need to offer better wages or a better work environment in order to continue to attract people. I think it's a good thing when the difference in power in the labor market is lessened.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 04:06 PM) So with my family of 5 we'd get 75K? My wife would probably retire immediately and we'd move into a much bigger house. I don't know specifically what an individual in Rockford, IL would get that would meet their "basic needs."

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 04:02 PM) So you're going to pay someone not working the same salary as a teacher or other lower level public employee that IS working. Why would anyone start working? What? No, of course not.You're still coupling income with employment, when a UBI specifically decouples them. Everyone gets a basic income check from the government, enough to ensure a basic or subsistence-level life style. Whatever other employment you have on top of that is your own issue. People would start working because most people want to be and enjoy being productive, active members of society. I could quit my current job, reduce my stress levels and take a less-taxing job earning less money, but I don't because I generally enjoy what I do and the added income. They might not work horrible jobs for s*** pay with asshole bosses and companies that treat them like dirt, but I see that as a 100% positive thing.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:54 PM) Who would get it? Everyone over 18? Would there be a cutoff based on current income? Everyone. It would not be means-tested. Children would also receive it, as opposed to their parents or guardian receiving a larger basic income to cover the costs of a dependent. Alaska's Permanent Fund functions this way. http://pfd.alaska.gov/application/ApplyingForAChild edit: thus ends my day of socialist rhetoric, back to work, comrades!

Yes, that's the idea behind it being a universal basic income. It's not tied to you being employed. What this does it remove a substantial amount of coercive power that employers have over the labor market because the labor market doesn't suddenly need to depend on them for basic subsistence. The obvious concern is long-term sustainability and voluntary joblessness, but in at least the limited study in Dauphine and comparisons to other related real-world examples, the decrease in employment was minimal and the overall societal effects were highly positive. I haven't read it before, but this page seems to give a pretty decent summary of the concept. http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:43 PM) Then you're talking about a lot more than 15k. Here are the equivalents of welfare programs already: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/08/19/...what-pays-more/ Potentially, but I'm not going to trust an editorial blog at the WSJ as an accurate source of information.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:36 PM) Also, let's assume we implement this plan, do we get rid of the rest of welfare? No more public housing, no more food stamps, no medicaid? Probably yes to everything but the bolded unless we enact a full-blown socialized health care access system in addition to the UBI. Alaska already has a small basic income thanks to its natural resources. Every Alaskan citizen who spends at least half of the year in the state gets a check from the state government that's a result of the state's lease of the peoples' collective natural resources rights. Here's a quick wiki recap with some links of the "Mincome" experiment in Dauphine, Canada from the 1970's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:34 PM) Not taking a side on this particular argument, but about these discussions of 15k being enough to live on... 1. Definitely does not work nationally. 2. All the budgeting people are doing are assuming nothing goes wrong, ever. And no life insurance or home insurance or the like. Number 2 is key to understanding something - those are the people that, when someting DOES go wrong (which at some point it will), they have no safety net, and immediately become a cost and drag on government monies. So some degree of safety net is going to have some positive effect in negating that. Thus, PPACA. A very imperfect solution. But, providing some basic health insurance for cheap does in fact help mitigate one significant chunk of those disaster scenarios for individuals and families. It will certainly have some positive effect in that regard, though I'd say it is nearly impossible to say how much. Being poor in this country is expensive. It means never really having enough to cover the basics, and definitely not enough to cover emergencies, which leads to the payday loan/check-cashing/credit card debt spiral. Cash flow is zero or negative basically at all times, and something we'd consider minor and annoying could be devastating. That old beater you have to get to work blows a headgasket and you don't have $1000 to get it fixed? Well, you're probably going to lose your job now unless you can find a way to bum rides. Get sick for a week? Sorry, your employer probably doesn't provide paid sick leave. You're not going to be able to pay your bills this week, and you may even be fired. That's what a UBI could mitigate. A UBI would also incorporate food stamps, housing assistance, etc., not be an additional program.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:27 PM) They probably do. Maybe. I know it's frequently argued that minimum wages lead to more unemployment because employers will still have the same overall pool of "wages money," it'll just get split up across less people now, but real-world studies haven't found that effect. I guess it's possible that overqualified college students who'd otherwise not be working would take jobs at retail and fast food places if the wages were bumped up to $10-12/hr, but like Balta said, there's a lot more people working minimum wage (or near-minimum wage) jobs than there are non-working college students who'd suddenly take one of these jobs part-time if it paid a few more dollars an hour.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:27 PM) That's 95% of the country though. That's our system. We work, we get paid, we hopefully can make our income and/purchases make us additional money, and then we die. Whether you make 10 bucks an hour or 40, you generally spend according to what you make and are still a slave to your employment. What's the alternative? Forcing an employer you pay you a base amount isn't going to change that. A UBI wouldn't be provided by an employer. I know that's 95% of the country. That's a big portion of people globally these days. I know that's "our system," but I believe that systems should work for humanity, not the other way around, and that our current system leads to or at least allows an awful lot of unnecessary human suffering for the benefit of a few. Being forced to take that minimum wage job and still struggling like hell just to get by while having to put up with a s***ty, abusive workplace or a manager who harasses and belittles you is a s***ty system. A UBI would allow people the real option of saying "f*** this job, I don't need it and won't work it until you treat me like a human being."

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:20 PM) $15,000 less 15% + $870 for taxes = $11,880 http://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable $11,880 / 12 = $990 (- stare income taxes) Rent? Food? Clothing? Transportation? Health Care? Could it be done? I don't think so for most of America. At those income levels, you're going to be getting most if not all of your taxes and then some back thanks to the EITC, which functions as a backdoor basic income.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:19 PM) Australia is also 92% white. So? You'd still see the same effect, more-qualified college students taking lower-level-but-now-higher-paying jobs regardless of race, if it's a real effect to be concerned about. Raising minimum wages (or providing a UBI) has a racial aspect because of the disproportionate number of minorities in poverty in this country, but there's plenty of white poverty. There are poor white people and college-going middle and upper class people of color. You could be correct that this change would lead to more middle-class college students pushing out working-class people from low-skill jobs, but it wouldn't be a directly racial thing. To put it another way, why would McDonalds in America hire the college-going middle-class person over someone who isn't going to college, but McDonalds in Australia wouldn't?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:11 PM) Rent $680/month (i'm sure you could find cheaper) http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/apa/4206018407.html Utilities - $60-80 Food - $100 (could easily be done for less) Cheap healthcare plan - $50/month as we learned today and no deductible What else? Misc expenses, call it $100 bucks. So there's $1000 bucks a month with an extra $250/month for the year to spend on other things (public transit, clothes, whatever). Absolutely doable. As I said about 10 times, this is a LIVING wage, not a luxury lifestyle. Your turn. Give me that number. Back up your claim that a universal base income is the way to go. $15k might be a good universal basic income level if those numbers are truly representative of an average individual's minimal budget. I don't know why you always assume that I or anyone else actually envisions a luxurious lifestyle as the bare minimum. I support a universal basic income (different from a minimum wage) for a variety of reasons, but the most important is that I don't believe that people should be forced into wage-labor for others' profits as generally their only means of subsistence. The power balance is titled heavily in the favor of the wealthy when you must work for them or live in destitution. A universal basic income would provide for a minimal, spartan life. Because of this, you wouldn't be forced to take a job for a pittance in horrible work conditions with bosses/companies that treat you like disposable garbage. I believe that an overwhelming majority of people would still work and be productive members of society, and there have been studies and experiments that have borne this out. Most people want to feel productive, to be doing something for themselves and for those around them. You don't need the threat of starvation and homelessness to motivate you to work.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 03:00 PM) Please provide me with a number for your "base income" instead of "more than what they get now." HH has a good starting point with his. No, you made the $15k claim. Support your claim.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 21, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) Most places in Indiana. Ah, right, silly of me to neglect rural poverty, I was only thinking of urban/suburban poverty.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 18, 2013 -> 02:14 PM) It does at first, because of how damn sharp they are. And when I mean sharp, I mean actually for really real razor sharp. By comparison, other "razor blades" shouldn't be called razor anythings, because they're dull and tend to pull hair vs slicing through it like butter. It's so sharp, that you can put the razor against your cheek and allow the weight of the razor itself to shave you...as a matter of fact, pressing down is how you cut your face off. Now that I've been doing it for a few years it's about the same. The reason I actually tried these was because traditional disposables and electrics gave me severe burn/bumps. I have sensitive skin on my face/neck, and this solved that problem for me. I've been doing this for a couple of years, too. Sliced my cheek a bit once or twice, but otherwise much preferred over the cheap disposables I was using.