>reckong

Time for bed.

I'm very interested in the first part of that. To be blunt, I think a basic universal income is one of those ideas that seem absurd now, but will be considered a basic human right in the future.

>>51755
>I think a basic universal income is one of those ideas that seem absurd now, but will be considered a basic human right in the future.
Sure, after everyone in the third world is on the same economic scale as the rest of us. Because that's going to happen soon.

>>51756

The third world doesn't count, basically. Things we've considered basic human rights for a hundred years are out the window in bongo bongo land.

>>51755
I don't know about 'basic human right', for reasons that >>51756 is hinting at, but I can see it becoming increasingly necessary in developed societies as not just traditional labour, but many fields of work become obsolete with advancing technology.

That's a lot.

Rest in peace, Switzerland.

Dear OP,

Thanks for the tip off. I am now going to hide the thread as I can't be arsed to deal with economic illerates, and this is /pol/.

Can I move there and get the money?

>>51761
What's the cost of living like there? I remember them making a fuss about minarets, so I imagine they have relatively strict immigration controls to stop them getting flooded with sponging gypsies.

Green Party lad here. This is absolutely awesome.

>>51753
Wouldn't it make a huge impact on prices, though? Sounds outright insane.

>>51764

If the prices go up, it makes no difference, because the money will just recirculate back into the population. In any case, even if prices are lower, those on a lower income couldn't afford them anyway, which is why the change is needed.

>>51763

Green party are good and all but too... middle claaaahs. Join the proper socialists, lad. Not the SWP, mind.

>>51767
Oh here we go. Who are the 'proper socialists', again? The People's Front of Judea, I presume?

>>51768
The Socialist party?

That's more than my mum earns, why should she work anymore?

>>51769
Proletkult.
I remember a time back in the mid '80s when the in-thing with Militant and SWP (and WRP before all the Delta-ing came out) youngsters was to look as close to Brecht as possible. Now it's the same with Trotsky or an East German.

Join the LRC or something.

I support this, since the natural place for most of Switzerlands multinationals to relocate to would be Britain. Silly Swiss.

>>51770
Because she enjoys doing a job and contributing to the well-being of others rather than sitting on her arse. That's the only reason anyone should be working, not for money.

>>51771
Let's go Trotspotting!
http://libcom.org/blog/trotspotting-everything-you-always-wanted-know-about-sects-were-afraid-ask-18092009

The degree to which the left-wing is splintered is fucking ludicrous. The Greens are the biggest truly left-wing movement and I'm sticking with them.

>>51785

Someone has to clean the bogs. Nobody wants to clean the bogs. Society currently has a pretty good way of finding someone to clean the bogs - economic necessity. How does a society in which nobody needs to work solve the problem of bog-cleaning and equally unpleasant work?

To give a practical example, a large proportion of the soft fruit crop in the UK simply rots in the fields, because there aren't enough pickers. The Eastern Europeans who do most of the fruit picking in this country earn well above minimum wage, but the locals just can't be arsed getting up at 5am to go and pick blackcurrants.

>>51787

Simple answer. Unpleasant jobs should be paid better than the pleasant and desirable ones with high status. Why should the hard and messy jobs be paid the worst? This has always been a bad system which does not reward people properly.

>>51788
Because hard work or desirability isn't a measure of how useful something actually is, the supply of labour that's capable of doing it is. If nobody actually wanted to clean toilets then the wages would be higher.

>>51787
Bog cleaning jobs would start paying higher salaries, and it would be attractive.

>>51785
>Because she enjoys doing a job and contributing to the well-being of others rather than sitting on her arse.
Who said she'd be sitting on her arse? Fuck you for pushing your sense of entitlement on my mum.

>>51789

>If nobody actually wanted to clean toilets


Implying people actually want to do it? Seriously lad, sort yourself out. You've lost grip of reality.

>>51793
Clearly they do, because they do.

>>51787

Easy. Superloos and Fetlife.

>>51788

Economics works on supply and demand not on arbitrary measures of 'desirability'. Unless you are physically disabled anyone is capable of doing menial work - even without a basic grasp of numeracy or literacy. However higher paid jobs are almost always tied to skills that are increasingly rare in the workforce and often require some form of higher education or training.

Let's say you think this is unfair and imagine an ideal benevolent government can control things to make pay inversely proportional to desirability. Ignoring the fact that ideally benevolent governments are in the same category as infinite energy sources of 'things that cannot physically exist', how do you define a by definition subjective quality like desirability? For example, I would absolutely despise any job that required waking up before 6am whereas for some people this would be fine so long as they don't have to work with the public (for example say). My point being one man's ideally desirable job isn't necessarily another's.

>>51796

Except, you know, all those economists who have dismissed Supply and Demand as bollocks without any application in the real world and are calling for it, along with a hell of a lot more of the Dismal Science to be dropped from textbooks. How is that PPE coming along lad? Second year treating you well?

>>51796

And I refer you to >>51795.

>>51796
>Economics works on supply and demand
>not on arbitrary measures

Oh lad.

>>51797
>all those economists who have dismissed Supply and Demand as bollocks without any application in the real world

It's as obvious as evolution, are we really going to go down this route?

>>51800
Supply and demand aren't arbitrary, nobody just chooses a supply and chooses a demand.

>>51801
>>51802

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/10/economics-lecturers-accused-university-courses
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/11/university-economics-teaching-overhaul

I know the Telegraph covered this as well, but am struggling to track it down.

>>51804

Both articles are complete fiction. The most glaring factual error is that Michael Joffe is cited in both articles as professor of economics at ICL, when in fact he is neither an economist nor a professor. He is a retired reader in biology, who holds no economic qualifications and has never published a paper on economics in any known journal.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/collegedirectory/index.asp?PeopleID=1038844
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=michael+joffe

>>51805

Fine. I'll accept your digging. So why have three Nobel laureates in Economics come out repeatedly over the past couple of years slating "Economic Science"? I am cooking at the mo, so apologies for not being able to pull stuff up - Google is not being very helpful.

>>51805
Wrong.
http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/5/873.abstract?sid=a67d0319-274c-477d-b27e-e359d9d824e6

That took about a minute of looking.

Try harder next time please.

>>51804
>The profession has been criticised for its adherence to models of a free market that claim to show demand and supply continually rebalancing over relatively short periods of time – in contrast to the decade-long mismatches that came ahead of the banking crash in key markets such as housing and exotic derivatives, where asset bubbles ballooned.

I'm going to assume this is the sum total of evidence you have proposed for the motion that "supply and demand is bollocks", seeing as I found no reference to neither supply nor demand in the Guardian article.

Obviously real life isn't going to perfectly follow a simple model. The above quoted text isn't claiming at all that the idea of supply and demand is false - it is saying that there are additional kinetic factors involved in the rebalancing.

It's analagous to how diamond doesn't spontaneously turn into the more stable graphite under standard conditions - the kinetics are far too slow and we need to consider non-equilibrium effects, not throw the entirety of thermodynamics (cf supply and demand) out the window.

>>51805
As a further aid to you, undergraduatelad, google scholar is bollocks (well, not completely useless but you can't rely on it) and you're much better off just doing it the slow way.

JSTOR is shit too, just letting you know.

>>51808

You are not replying to who you think you are replying to. Feel free to continue, it is always fucking hilarious to watch a Unilad try and defend psuedo-science. Or, you could start a thread in /IQ/ regarding the TOP BANTZ you are currently having.

>>51810

Well I have now found all three laureates. Two minutes. I will leave it to Unilad to track them down however, his research skills seem a tad lacking. And I have apple and sausage stew to eat.

>>51810
I have no time for TOP BANTS I'm working.

>>51811
You high?

>>51802
Pretending that two concepts which are dependent on each other are easily definable and exist in a vacuum is indeed rather arbitrary. That's why even the Nobel committee has recognised the importance of behavioural economics.

>>51767
'Green World' had some statistics about party membership which suggests otherwise. Unfortunately I can't remember which issue it was in.

>>51770>>51787

These are not benefits.

If you live under a system where you receive an unconditional income, and then choose to work, you now are in receipt of two incomes.

In a way that provides actually far more of an incentive to work than do typical current-day welfare systems.

>>52194

The basic income idea also eliminates the huge requirements and costs of administration as all you need to see is a pulse, basically. It also wipes out virtually all fraud issues and incentives to lie in this area. It would greatly encourage people to work, especially part time as no longer would there be clashes and worries about "declaring" it or the endless problems and hassle of signing off and on or the worry about losing benefits and the steady income and safety net for a potentially short term risky job. I really do think this might be a future foundation of the next big step in the development and improvement of society.

>>52195
How does it eliminate fraud? What's to stop someone pretending to be several people and claiming several incomes?

Anarchylad approves of a basic living income. It wouldn't be anarchism, but one of the founding notions in anarchist theory is that every individual has a right to the means of subsistence. This originally meant land for peasant farmers, in a nutshell, but a guaranteed basic income in a capitalist society is a step in that direction.

>>52196

Is that the only fraud that happens today then? Well that is a surprise. Don't be silly.

What you describe is one of the most extreme and far more difficult than most and also easier to deal with. That is the simple reality of things.

I am both impressed and amazed about the lack of "what about freeloaders" in this thread. Well done lads. I am...incredibly impressed.

Anyway, I thought I would paraphrase my friend on the issue anyway: "if someone wants to spend the rest of their life in a bedsit, lying in bed all day, and seating baked beans, then fine. I believe they need mental help, but if they really do, fuck 'em. I pity them, but that's fine with me. Their drain on our resources will be miniscule."

>>52199
>Their drain on our resources will be miniscule."
'miniscule' being equal to or greater than my tax money, meaning I am paying for their lifestyle and they're not paying for mine.

>>52199
> if someone wants to spend the rest of their life in a bedsit, lying in bed all day, and seating baked beans, then fine. I believe they need mental help, but if they really do, fuck 'em. I pity them, but that's fine with me.
Is your friend by any chance Al Murray, pub landlord?
Anyway, there's only one proper response to that sort of talk...

https://www.youtube.com/v/RaYonB4G40c

Also, I'd like to add
> seating baked beans
This made me imagine a lunatic carefully arranging baked beans around the house, some in little chairs, some leaning casually against the wall, a whole tableau of them dotted around his flat. Which would be mental.

>>52200

3/10 SEE ME

>>52203

Keynes, please go.

>>52199
Those are my feelings exactly. I hate those right-wingers who identify a tiny proportion of the population who have no real wish to contribute to society, and then use that as an excuse to slash public services for all users, legitimate or not. It's illogical.

>>52205

And indeed, utter drivel. The vast, and I really do mean vast, majority of the population like to do productive things during their day. It really does expose a mix of mental illness and sheer laziness on the behalf of those who seem to think that THE DREAM is to sit around on their arse all day.

>>52205
It's not illogical, it's a way of making a problem seem much larger than it actually is, therefore making it a more convincing argument. People are more concerned about the overall tax burden than just a few individuals.

>>52207

Hmm...kinda, kinda not. And the thread was about a base income.

>>52207

Really is dumb when you find about how the financial system works. Banks lending out more money than they have, getting more back in interest, and so on. Most tax is paid by the richest, who, with no mortgage or rent left to pay, benefit disproportionately from the financial system.

>>52205

Except that if everyone in Britain were given £1700 a month tax free for the rest of their days, why the fuck would you bother doing menial work? I work 40 hours a week for £1400 a month pre tax. I sure as hell wouldnt be getting up for that if I made £20k a year (40k with a missus) . Now if the money was only given to the employed and thus people were forced into work to claim it as long as you did a full working week, I would agree. It would make the money worth spending as it would ignite the industries that have fallen since the Crunch since people would be buying and upgrading their houses with the extra money since £1700 a month is a decent mortgage payer, especially if you work since you would only be paying the normal bills ontop and leaving you a sizable wage.

Hell, allow students to claim it too but only under the guise of paying a student loan and lodgings so that they are free to learn and work with no fear of debt.

Obviously only natives can apply to stop the johnny foreigner claiming it but it would cause the British economy to explode into a frenzy of consumption and production.

>>52367
People who do menial work would end up getting paid more than those that just sit on their arse all day long.

Why do you like to keep this system? Why do you feel like you need to force people to do menial work?

>>52367

While I disagree slightly with the start of your post (not sure where 1700 a month cmomes from, but maybe I am missing something) you are bang on when it comes to consumption and production.

This highlights what is so wrong with our current governments policies - less tax for the wealthy, paid for by removing cash from the poor. Poor people spend all their money. Because they are poor. Rich people don't because they already are spending a certain portion and don't need to spend more. If we upped benefit the economy would notice it immediately. Or minium wage. Or both.

Sage because I am sick and rambling.

"Give everyone money" is on par with "why don't they just make a trillion pound coin"

>>52367
>Except that if everyone in Britain were given £1700 a month tax free for the rest of their days, why the fuck would you bother doing menial work?
Exactly. Employers would then have difficulty filling those positions and consequently, as a Tory minister correctly pointed out this week, they'd have to pay more.

People are afraid of this idea mostly because of the constant demonising and brainwashing by the media in recent years. I can remember Brooker and others highlighting how ridiculous it has got. The suggestion mentioned by the OP is the best idea to move society forward and improve the lot of the vast majority.

Have they voted on this yet?

>>52370

Your brain is on a par with a peanut.

>>52370
What do you think is sitting in the vaults of Scottish banks?

>>52375
>What is inflation

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>52376
An inflatable trillion pound coin?

>>52368

Except for the fact that working doesnt really pay for a single man's life. Rent is too high, bills too expensive and so on for a man on a 40 hour minimum wage job to live solo. However, someone on the dole will have his bills paid, rent scuppered and all at the expense of the tax payer for no effort other than 1 visit to the job office once every 2 weeks.

Were you to make people WANT to work to get their government issued balancer, people would work. They would do those shitty menial jobs. It would promote the economy of the nation and increase industrial investment in the nation as the demand for jobs rises and businesses seek to capitalise on cheap wages set by the government booster.

The benefit lifers would still get their rent and such paid but instead of setting aside extra money, it would instead come from their government issued money and thus remove bureacracy.

>>52370

Not really. Promoting spending of wealth is how you break out of economic slumps and promote industrial growth especially if you get said 'free cash' from taxing international imports of otherwise domestically produced goods.

I personally see this not so much as free money but as properly allocated benefit funding. Removal of things like tax credits, charity tax breaks, housing credit etc etc and lumping it into a single lump sum of money per month for every person who earns under a certain amount of money (no point giving Wayne Rooney the cash after all) would either give better value for money as it isnt wasted on bureacracy and moving between multiple accounts or at least better allocation as people decide what to spend it on.

People who mindlessly spend money will always do so and people who horde it will also do so as well.

>>52378

You appear to be arguing at cross purposes again lad. Long lunch, was it?

>>52378
I don't know what you are trying to say any more. Is this IDS? Hi IDS.

>>52387
If it is indeed IDS, I'd tell him that it's a shame to see a rare example of someone in politics talking actual sense only to go and get it so monumentally wrong.

Wouldn't this cause the cost of housing to skyrocket? Greedy homeowners and landlords and all that.

In a few decades we've gone from the situation where married women could afford to stay at home and raise the kids to now having little option but to go out and work because the norm of dual household incomes has helped greatly push up the cost of living.

>>52387
Basic income isn't the same as universal credit, far from it.

>>52404

Lampposts.

>>52404

Hells bells, no homelessness would make house prices rise? How will all the people in homes cope?

>>51787

>How does a society in which nobody needs to work solve the problem of bog-cleaning and equally unpleasant work?

The problem solves itself.

Consider this- We have 7.1% unemployment in this country right now. If nobody actually NEEDED to work, do you think that figure would rise or lower?

It's worth thinking about. The way our economy currently works is that earning minimum wage, you have to work between 40 and 50 hours a week just to survive. That's 50 hours of labour you are providing at the absolute rock bottom, bargain rate. Due to the fact that a) there are a limited number of employment opportunities available at any one time, b) the number of people seeking employment is higher than the number of positions available, and c) you occupy this position full time, by economic necessity, we can conclude that by being employed full time at minimum wage, you are depriving others of a job.

Imagine you earned £1700 a month. Suddenly, you no longer need to do that menial, degrading, minimum wage job. Or at least, you no longer need to do it for 40 hours a week. You can just go in on Mondays and spend the rest of the week learning a musical instrument. You'll still be paid for the work you do, so it's pretty likely that you will; adjustments and counterbalances would mean that the citizen's wage essentially becomes a very generous pocket money, not enough to live luxuriantly. This would mean that overall, there are in fat more employment opportunities to go round. More people, as a result, would be in work, and less of them unemployed.

So let's go back to your hypothetical bog cleaner. You couldn't find anyone to do it full time, like you can now; some poor middle aged single mother forced to take up the apron and marigolds of shame to support her children. Instead she can come in and do it a couple of days a week to bring in a bit of money to treat the kids to a weekend out. Somebody else will do it the other days- Menial jobs are much, much less unappealing if you only have to do them on occasion.

TL;DR Why aren't we at this point already? Surely it would be healthier for the economy to have more people sharing what jobs there are? Why must people still work backbreaking full-time menial roles when there is clearly a large surplus of labour?

>>52986
Would this unconditional income be taxed? Getting £1,700 per month from the government is the equivalent of a gross salary of just under £26k (not far off the average UK salary of £26,500). Also, for curiosity's sake, how much does someone on minimum wage presently get from the government in the form of tax credits and the like?

>>52987

Well I'm on minimum wage and get fuck all.

You have to have a kid or meet other conditions; young single people are shit out of luck.

>>52986

It'd be as big a change as the industrial revolution or the introduction of agriculture. It'd have tremendously positive impact culturally and socially. I can see people blossoming under it. I think it would improve work ethic if people don't resent these jobs and feel it is their choice - something they desire to do for the desired results, rather than the modern day gulags and threats. Instead of middle and working classes paddling furiously to avoid drowing they'll have room to breathe and develop beyond the blinkered work-buy-die tunnel so many feel trapped in. The universal nature of it is key. Even systems like an OAP bus pass work better that way and are resented by the wealthiest far less if they know in their heart that at any moment they too can enjoy the benefits of the system and that it is by choice and not seemingly unfair or arbritrary rules and qualifiers that they do not. Oddly I've known one or two very wealthy and upper class that were avid bus pass users too.

>>52989

I feel sorry for you and anyone else stuck on that pittance. It is a woeful sum. The minimum wage has gone from an idea to improve people's lot by increasing wages and slightly balancing equality to leaving them behind with pennies and an excuse to do nothing more.

>>52992
Except that's not true. The minimum wage has risen about 25% since it was introduced and that's inflation adjusted.

>>52999

Oh how I laughed. 10/10

>>53000
Ok.

>Swiss to vote in referendum on world's highest minimum wage
>The proposal is for a 22 Swiss francs (£14.70) an hour and if voted through it would put a salary floor under the average 35-hour week of more than £27,000

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/swiss-vote-referendum-world-highest-minimum-wage-manufacturing

>>55181
Fucking hell. Those crazy Swiss, you'll never guess what they'll think of next.

>>55182
The vote is today, the BBC article on it (which says the minimum full time salary would be £32k) says it's likely to be rejected. This line sounds familiar, though:

>The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says that a key element of the campaign in favour of a minimum wage is the argument that the Swiss welfare system is being forced to subsidise businesses which refuse to pay a living wage.

>>55183
I hope it passes, and we take up all their business.

The Greens want to introduce a £72 a week universal Citizen's Income. Apparently to fund this they want to scrap the income tax personal allowance, JSA, child benefit, tax credits, etc. and they'll raise the basic rate of tax to 30% and make 12% National Insurance payable on all income, rather than having the first £153 of weekly income NI free as at present.

It doesn't seem very practical and thought through to me.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/green-party-citizens-income-policy-hits-poor

God I love the Greens.

>>59415 here again.

Doing a quick calculation to see the practicalities of it:

Someone on £20,000 a year would lose their income tax allowance of £10,500 (from April) so that's £3,150 at 30%, plus an extra £950 on the rest of their income that's now taxed 10% higher. The additional NI would work out at about £955, meaning they'd be paying an extra £5,055 to receive a £3,744 Citizen's Income. No idea if they'd also lose tax credits and the like, assume they would if they had kids.

>>59415
Funny how you bumped this as soon as the news broke that it might not work so that you can claim you didn't think it would work all along! The Greens are an evidence based party and they will incorporate this new evidence into their policy. The CIT has provided numerous costed analyses of the policy in the past, but I presume you didn't decide it 'wasn't well thought out' when reading one of those.

>>59418
Oh Greenlad.

>The Greens are an evidence based party

Fjordable mirth.

>>59418
I bumped it now because this is the first I've heard of it. It's not even remotely thought out - using my calculations in >>59417 - if they get rid of the income tax personal allowance, raise income tax to 30%, get rid of the NI threshold and replace it with a £72 per week Citizen's Income then anyone earning £9,300 and above is worse off (£9,300 @ 30% = £2,790 plus the £955 extra NI = £3,745, i.e. greater than the £3,744 of £72 x 52). If that's how they plan to fund it then there's great big fuck-off glaring holes that anyone with half a brain could have worked out.

>>59419
^{I thought you wanted me to stop calling myself Greenlad? What's the point if you're going to do it anyway?}

>>59420
Yeah but those figures aren't in Green Party policy, so you can't say 'they didn't think it through'. To be fair I don't know who thought it through and what figures they used, but you're using figures from a Guardian article.

>they'll raise the basic rate of tax to 30% and make 12% National Insurance payable on all income
Where does it say that in our policy, for instance? Official policy states National Insurance will be abolished and merged into income tax.

>>59421
If it is the case that NI is abolished, income tax is at 30% and there's no personal allowance then that would see people better off:

Someone on £30k would pay income tax of £3,900 and NI of £2,645 = £6,545 under the current system. If it was 30% on everything then that's £9,000 in tax, but the Citizen's Income would reduce this by £3,744 to £5,256 net.