What's your opinion on Basic Income?

[ivwshane]

LOL, good one. I can hear the bleeding hearts whining already about those poor disenfranchised illegals being left out. obummer and his minions are already hard at work to create amnesty for tens of millions of illegals, and we have no realistic border at this point to keep out the additional millions that would surely come and be the next invading wave.

When you don't have a valid argument then just throw out the "evil liberals" garbage!

Do you wet your pants when you see a liberal? Or do you just close your eyes and look away?

 

[PokerGuy]

Beyond objects of sentimental and familial value, inheritance should be heavily taxed.

That money was already taxed several times, there is no logical reason why it should be taxed yet again when someone decides to give their belongings to their loved ones upon their death.

I will impart as much wisdom and knowledge to my children as I can, and do my best to enable them to succeed on their own merits. However my intent to is donate the majority of my financial holdings (if any remain) to charity on my death.

That choice is certainly yours to make, but why should you force your choice on others? They should do with their money as they see fit, just like you do with yours as you see fit.

I agree with you that inheritance should be taxed heavily. I also believe any loophole that might enable someone to get around that principle should be monitored and closed.

Ah yes, the heavy handed approach, everything belongs to the government, it should all be taken away and any loophole that prevents it going to the government so politicians can hand it out to their cronies or waste it should be closed. Typical leftist mentality.

Everything that you wish to happen after you are gone you are relying on the government regulations. Imagine you own a piece of land - whether you leave it to charity or your offspring, you still rely on the government regulation (i.e. force) to execute that will after you are gone.

Yes, and guess what: during your life, as you were accumulating that wealth, you paid money to fund that government such that it could enforce those regulations. Why should you not expect to get what you paid for?

 

[PokerGuy]

When you don't have a valid argument then just throw out the "evil liberals" garbage!

Do you wet your pants when you see a liberal? Or do you just close your eyes and look away?

Please show me where I used "evil liberals" in my post. Oh, and I don't close my eyes, I usually just have to hold my nose to avoid the stench

The post I referenced said illegals would not be included in the handouts. Given historical reference over many many years, you'd have to be incredibly naive and/or stupid to believe it.

 

[jackstar7]

Lesson to take away: hypotheticals are just as scary to some people as actual policies.

 

[lopri]

Yes, and guess what: during your life, as you were accumulating that wealth, you paid money to fund that government such that it could enforce those regulations. Why should you not expect to get what you paid for?

At last, a concession. So it appears that you endorse government regulations, albeit only those regulations that advance your interest. But you do not oppose to regulations per se.

Are we in agreement that a typical libertarian argument (e.g. "Regulations are bad") is a bogus?

A book would be needed to really explain the situation, to stay on topic i would say that welfare is not the problem as such, looking through the numbers it appears that even corporates benefit from it, just imagine that they get more aids and subsides than what they pay as income taxes, our problem, wich has many heads, is that we were ruled 10 years by conservatives wich managed the country according to dogmas imported from the US, you see, ideologicaly speaking we re all living in the same world, the economic school of Chicago with Milton Friedman or other Van Heyk are as well known here, if not more, than in the US.

So we had our economy litteraly torned apart during thoses ten years with taxes massively reduced for the 20% wealthier, automotive output was halved, despite making 1bn€/year net income the steel industry, Arcelor wich was rated 1 on the world, was sold to a smaller private company that just shrinked it by 40%, real estate inflated by 140% hence attracting all the investors money and definitly negating any attractivity for real industries, the list goes on of the "achievements" of those cluless conservatives who think that laissez faire is still relevant, Sarkozy who was elected in 2007 with a capitalist agenda just looked irrelevant in 2008 when the international economic downturn pressed even the most capitalist countries to massively subside their economies, it was a shock for them when they saw Obama s administration buying GM and other private entities to keep them from bankruptcy while massively subsiding the rest of the lot with printed fiat money, heck, with its money printing press working at full rate the US is surely the de facto biggest and most rabid welfare state in the world, whoever benefit from this bonanza.

Thank you for sharing the story, Abwx.

 

[PokerGuy]

At last, a concession. So it appears that you endorse government regulations, albeit only those regulations that advance your interest. But you do not oppose to regulations per se.

What is that drivel? Could you please point to anyone who argues that all government and all government regulation is by definition a bad thing? What a lousy strawman you built, you can at least try to make it seem like a position actually held by someone before you knock it down

Are we in agreement that a typical libertarian argument (e.g. "Regulations are bad") is a bogus?

"typical libertarian argument" ... according to who exactly? Again, lousy strawman. Libertarians believe in individual freedom, which is not the same as believing in complete anarchy and complete lack of any governance.

 

[werepossum]

Ignoring historical baggage and politics, what are we actually trying to accomplish?

If you were stripped of all your possessions and dropped into a new country/economy as a child, what would you want it to look like?

Should a government/economy be designed to maximize the chances of such a child achieving his or her goals over the course of a lifespan? Should it be designed to maximize the amount of work that child does in it's lifetime? Should it be designed to maximize happiness, at the expense of work and accomplishment?

What work would you be happy to let a robot do? What work would you prefer be done by humans? What work(if any) would you prefer to do yourself?

What method of taxation would be best able to accomplish the above?


I think an estate tax would be necessary, and a basic income would be helpful to most of the above. Dead people shouldn't get to pursue their goals at the expense of the living, and I don't think being born to a rich person is a good enough reason to get priority over billions of dollars. Sure, I don't mind an exemption big enough that most people don't have to worry about it (say 500k per heir or something).

lol Translation: Fuck other people - but do so in a way that doesn't harm ME.

 

[jackstar7]

More food for the thoughts: http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/rawilson.html

 

[SMOGZINN]

That money was already taxed several times, there is no logical reason why it should be taxed yet again when someone decides to give their belongings to their loved ones upon their death.

I find this an interesting question. What was the reason for taxing it in the first place? Would that reason not still hold true no matter how many times, or when, you tax it?

That choice is certainly yours to make, but why should you force your choice on others? They should do with their money as they see fit, just like you do with yours as you see fit.

Certainly that is an opinion as well. I don't think that there is any natural law that states that children should get their parents possession on death of that parent. The questions that have to be asked is does society give any weight to a dead person's wishes, and how much 'heredity power' does a society want to allow? If society decides that dead people don't get to continue making decisions, and that we want to have some limit on hereditary power, which is at least one concept that the United States was founded on, then it seems reasonable to limit how much can be inherited.

I don't know the answer to these questions, I see both sides of the argument. But I think that you are making some pretty big assumptions, that not everyone will agree with, to believe that only your method is reasonable.

 

[1prophet]

LOL, good one. I can hear the bleeding hearts whining already about those poor disenfranchised illegals being left out. obummer and his minions are already hard at work to create amnesty for tens of millions of illegals, and we have no realistic border at this point to keep out the additional millions that would surely come and be the next invading wave.

When you don't have a valid argument then just throw out the "evil liberals" garbage!

Do you wet your pants when you see a liberal? Or do you just close your eyes and look away?

Thought he was talking about Reagan.:biggrin:

As for the problem with Welfare , the rich are the ones who are always brought up as not paying their fair share and something must be done about it,

but since they actually help even if indirectly in writing the feel good legislation through their lobbyists,

the burden ends up being passed to the working, struggling middle class under the guise of going after the evil rich and their money like some sort of Robin Hood.

All the while the rich like JP Morgan make out like bandits through the administration of welfare like in the case of the EBT card system.

JP Morgan’s Food Stamp Empire

How the welfare state became a profit center.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/01/jp-morgan-s-food-stamp-empire.html

We seldom think of poverty programs as profit centers, preferring to discuss them as matters of ideology. Liberals view programs like WIC—which provides food to both pregnant mothers and mothers of young children—as the mark of a compassionate nation. Conservatives see them as a gateway to government dependency.


Arguably, they may fit either of those descriptions. But as with so many other government programs in Washington, both WIC and its close cousin, the federal food stamp program, have morphed into something else: cash cows for powerful corporate interests.

But there may be one more reason the food stamp industrial complex continues to balloon: because wealthy corporate interests have been filling the campaign coffers of politicians who control the program’s trajectory. Prior to the 2002 EBT implementation mandate, JP Morgan’s political donations to members of the House and Senate agriculture committees were modest. But since 2002, they’ve been on a steady climb upward, rising from $82,302 to $332,930 in just the span of eight years.



Adding to the unseemliness is the fact that three senators and six representatives who are agriculture committee members had, as of 2010, investments in JP Morgan; one senator, meanwhile, had money invested in Xerox. And in March 2012, the White House disclosed that President Obama has money in a JPMorgan Chase private client asset management checking account.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

A fellow economist from Germany said that this idea was proposed by a leftist politician in his home country recently. Basically, a basic income (or minimum income) would be given to everyone. It would basically be a survival income that would cover food and rent. In theory, it would allow the individual to focus their activity on finding or creating employment. Naturally, it would replace welfare. I told him that there would be substantial abuse, even in an egalitarian country like Germany. He wasn't so sure. Do you think it would work here?

link

Saying there would be "substantial abuse" ignores the amount of abuse that already occurs with the given status quo of the welfare system we have in place today. What a basic income system would do is to eliminate the governmental road block some people face in accessing benefits, reduce the ever expanding government bloat and nanny state that accompanies the system in order ensure that the illusion of accountability that is sold to the public.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

You can kill two birds with one stone by having the federal government get the money and giving it to the states. Then the states can give it out as a voucher of some sort. That way PPP matches market price (within reason). This would eliminate abuse and increase the amount of renters in the country. This would allow for more social mobility and thus reduce the supply/demand gap for jobs in various parts of the country.

Or you would just have people file taxes at the end of the year and the return would be dealt out over 12 month period for those who generate negative income taxes or via a lump sum. In the end the money to fund this system is the money spent from the current welfare system and the savings on reducing the future bloat of that system that can be directly put into the accounts of those who have generate a negative income tax return, i.e. generated no money to be taxed.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

He supported it at first, then he did a 180 and stopped supporting it.

He said a negative income tax is fine if you get rid of the billion welfare departments in the government. But the politicians just wanted the negative income tax (EITC) as another entitlement to tack on to everything else and was happy to have Milton's "support", but obviously ignored him once he realized it was just going to be an additional entitlement program and starting writing against it.

He didn't do a 180 on the topic. He was very clear from the beginning with the fact that this system would only work if the bloat of the welfare bureaucracy was eliminated and the savings then put back into a negative income tax system itself to help fund it for future generations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

Thus allowing it to become a self-sustaining and mechanical function of government that would not have a need to be reliant on management/mismanagement by government itself and would be a part of the already established IRS tax system in the country.