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And we wouldn't need to do a lot of things like this controversial student debt thing. Just give every American $1,000 a month or whatever, and they can put that towards their loans, or their rent, or child care, or whatever. That's not nearly enough to discourage people from seeking jobs and being productive. Especially if the minimum wage of a job is $15 an hour. $1,000 a month guaranteed income is equivalent to $6.15 an hour (assuming 37.5 hour week), so, working would still be very attractive and necessary vs unemployment.
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Where do you think that $1000 a month for every American is going to come from?
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Originally Posted by primaltech
No, you won't. The majority of US poverty is fundamentally because of a lack of people having enough income (whether they have a job, or not). It's not some inherent genetic failing that conservatives with better sets of circumstances would like to believe it is. The lack of money also creates a deadly cycle full of traps and exploitation, and limited access to health care, education, healthy food, good transportation, etc. It actually costs more money to be poor, because you can't afford many of the initially-costly options that rich people have that enable them to save money long-term. Like having better quality and more reliable things.
Poverty is related to circumstances, bottom line. If you change the circumstances causing the poverty, you change the poverty situation. In this case, the changes I propose would be, 1) minimum wage level jobs would pay more money, 2) everyone would get some small amount of basic income, just as a supplement, and safety net. Not nearly as much income as would come from even a minimum wage job.
If these set of statements were correct, we wouldn't have lifecycles of poverty. Sure, there are some, who by circumstances are poor. But there are many more who will be there no matter how much you give them. It's a simple philosophy that sounds good -- just give them enough money and they won't be in poverty. If that were the case we'd have solved it decades ago. Instead, it's gotten worse. Spend enough time volunteering at the church and it becomes frustrating to watch. Seen it too often. Give them the help they need, find them jobs, clothes, etc. Two weeks later they're right back in line. The job? Didn't like the boss telling them what to do so they quit. The work clothes. Didn't need 'em so they tossed 'em. Food? Traded it for cigarettes, beer, and drugs. The first step to solving poverty is getting those in it to give a damn. Fix that and the rest will take care of itself. The ones I feel bad for are the kids. They can't help it but their parents are raising them up to be the next generation.
Where do you think that $1000 a month for every American is going to come from?
Progressive wealth taxes of some sort would clearly have to be involved. The details of what all specific types of taxes and on whom/what, and how all that would work exactly, would have to be worked out by people smarter than me, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be theoretically possible to implement and have a modest UBI of some type in place. I think I read that if we did that particular amount (12k per year), it would cost about $3.1 trillion annually. The current US annual tax revenue level I believe is over $4 trillion, so, it would necessarily involve increasing that. But, there could be a lot of other things that also get cut or reduced, along with it, especially anything that it would basically replace.
And, of course, that amount could be reduced, as it was just a hypothetical.
Anyway, having a Negative Income Tax threshold system, would probably be better in that respect than having a UBI system, if for nothing else than it should cost less, in theory. I think let's discuss NIT specifically and not UBI so much, since this thread was more supposed to be about NIT.
A NIT gives the most payment to the poorest people, and it phases out gradually as you approach the cutoff threshold. Here is one particular NIT proposal that I found, and he has the total cost at $855 billion:
Increase the various taxes on the obscenely ultrawealthy. Percentage-wise, they pay less taxes than everybody else. Wealth inequality keeps increasing and it's becoming increasingly concentrated. The income curve keeps bending, and the gap between rich and poor keeps growing. 400 people in this country have $4.5 trillion dollars:
Billionaires probably shouldn't exist, but hundred-billionaires absolutely shouldn't. Or not until we eliminate poverty and make sure everyone has a roof over their head, and health care.
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If these set of statements were correct, we wouldn't have lifecycles of poverty. Sure, there are some, who by circumstances are poor. But there are many more who will be there no matter how much you give them.
Okay, so, by this logic, if you take someone who currently has virtually $0 dollars and virtually no possessions (also known as, extreme poverty), and Jeff Bezos comes along and gifts them $5,000,000, so they now have a net worth of $5,000,000, that person will still be poor? A multi-millionaire, is poor?
I didn't say money does anything else other than that... obviously in itself it doesn't fix mental health issues where such issues are present. It doesn't do anything else, at all. It simply fixes the circumstance of poverty, which is, by its definition, a lack of resources. And of course, we're talking about not large amounts of money, but enough that would make a big difference for those who are experiencing poverty and homelessness and hunger. Again, it's about lifting people up to a situation where they can then lift themselves up. Or not. Of course not everyone is capable of that, but that's not a good reason not to help.
I mean, I DO see the "conservative side" (I guess?) of this argument, too. There are people who won millions in the lottery and got this mindset that they had infinite money, only to wind up bankrupt a short time later. I have known people (relatives) who actually had great benefits and advantages bestowed on them, who threw them away and struggle along with nothing.
But said relatives do have legit mental health issues. They do not have normal functioning minds. There is and always was something really off about how they think and the choices that they make. My line of reasoning has always been... What is the most reasonable, kind, and sensible way to address these situations? I don't think that there is a simple answer that provides the proverbial tide that lifts ALL boats. The problems faced by the poor in America are complex and varied. And not every scenario will be addressed by any one solution.
But to me, it IS easy to see when some kind of new-ish boom of exploitation takes place, that effects a vast number of people, many of whom are perfectly capable, mentally sound, responsible and willing to work. When just having those basic qualities and a commitment to exercising them is no longer enough to even guarantee that you'll have a roof over your head, I think that yeah...something's gotta give.
And when a person can hypothetically make a lot of RIGHT choices and live a very responsible life, yet still have some kind of situation like a health crisis take a wrecking ball to the security of their position at some point, I really do feel that our society is failing us.
For me, the best way forward is not to destroy the government and place everything in the hands of unfettered big business, nor to cripple business and place everything in the hands of an unfettered government. It is a balance where each checks the other with a great deal of required transparency and oversight by the people. If these entities get to a point where they only see the population as fodder for the aims of the few, rather than serving the needs of the many, it's all gonna eventually crash and burn.
For me, the best way forward is not to destroy the government and place everything in the hands of unfettered big business, nor to cripple business and place everything in the hands of an unfettered government. It is a balance where each checks the other with a great deal of required transparency and oversight by the people. If these entities get to a point where they only see the population as fodder for the aims of the few, rather than serving the needs of the many, it's all gonna eventually crash and burn.
Yeah well we're very far from "balance", and only getting further from it by the year and decade. And yet dare if we even suggest correcting it at all the other way, we see this pushback from the conservatives.
Right now, 1% of Americans control 32.3% of its wealth. They have approaching $50 trillion, and it's increasing by trillions per year. 1% of Americans control 16x more than 50% of us.
At what point will even the Fox News crowd start to see that there is something wrong with this? Hopefully it will be before 1% of the country controls more than half of its wealth, and that day will be here soon, if we continue to do nothing about income inequality. The word "oligarch" is thrown around now, but just wait.
10% of the country has no health insurance, and Jeff Bezos is projected to be a trillionaire before 2030. It's just disgusting to me. I'm all for free market capitalism, property rights, I'm all for rich people who earned it, but I mean, within reason. You know, like, how about a limit of a billion dollars for a single individual?
As we see in this thread, it's always some nonsense about how people who are not doing as well, they are undeserving, and everybody with 10 million times more than average people, is deserving of that disparity.
No, more like the whole system is completely messed up and exploitative, and almost nobody has any real leverage.
Here's a visualization that's 10 years old now, and it's only gotten even more out of whack since then:
We just need to restore the smooth curve of wealth distribution that used to exist.
We need to smooth the curve of population levels vs work needed that used to exist:
working at something useful and paid enough doing that to support themselves.
We need to smooth the curve of population levels vs work needed that used to exist:
working at something useful and paid enough doing that to support themselves.
Automation has eliminate most of those older jobs that paid well but were essentially menial and repetitive. And, what couldn't be automated got sent to other countries where pay scales are lower. For the jobs that remain, pay for the bottom of the scale has been stagnant for decades while the folks at the top just get more and more.
Automation has eliminate most of those older jobs that paid well...
Mostly correct; but HOW we got to fewer jobs is totally immaterial to the REAL problem here.
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...pay for the bottom of the scale has been stagnant for decades
Mostly correct. But WHY? The WHY is about having TOO MANY PEOPLE competing for them; aka the REAL problem.
Objectively, raw number, too many. This quantitative reality is compounded by the qualitative aspect.
Therefore... Any remedy or social program MEANT to help these people ... must reflect this root cause.
Because the rest of us, those doing the paying, will require the "help" to also end the TOO MANY problem.
Well, the sensible among us will.
Allowing the TOO MANY problem to perpetuate, carrying and expanding this surplus into future generations is social & economic suicide.
It's detrimental to virtually every other aspect of life on earth as well (air/water/food/etc).
Last edited by MrRational; 08-27-2022 at 08:28 AM..
My question is, could potentially a system like that, where those in the bottom let's say, 20% of wealth, get a big check every year from the government, funded by the income tax of the more comfortable 80%- be a social safety net program that could satisfy reformists across the political and ideological spectrum?
Did I miss the part of the U.S. Constitution that authorized the Fed govt to take money from one group and hand it to another group that did nothing to earn it?
Absence of money is basically the very definition of poverty. So yes, I would say money cures poverty.
I will give you two scenarios that expose the fallacy that poverty is the lack of money.
Scenario #1 - you own all the money in the world, but you're impoverished. Why? Because everyone else figured out how to trade and prosper without your money. So it won't buy anything, because no one wants your money.
Scenario #2 - everybody is credited with 22 billion billion dollards - so no one needs money ever again. However, since no one "needs" money, no one bothers to work, ship or trade for "more money" they don't need. Even the starving children are phenomenally wealthy.
To operate the "money scam" you need two things - a government that imposes obligations only payable in their money - and a money token system that's scarce and in demand.
Mostly correct; but HOW we got to fewer jobs is totally immaterial to the REAL problem here.
Mostly correct. But WHY? The WHY is about having TOO MANY PEOPLE competing for them; aka the REAL problem.
Objectively, raw number, too many. This quantitative reality is compounded by the qualitative aspect.
Therefore... Any remedy or social program MEANT to help these people ... must reflect this root cause.
Because the rest of us, those doing the paying, will require the "help" to also end the TOO MANY problem.
Well, the sensible among us will.
Allowing the TOO MANY problem to perpetuate, carrying and expanding this surplus into future generations is social & economic suicide.
It's detrimental to virtually every other aspect of life on earth as well (air/water/food/etc).
I don't think it's a matter of too many at the bottom causing pay stagnation, that stagnation has been occurring at higher pay scales as well.
There are a number of factors. Less union activity, more mobility, with people able to move elsewhere, complacency, low inflation, etc.
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