I understand why nobody listens, why nobody knows anything about capitalism, but why is everyone so lacking in cynicism?
A few years ago I got really pissed off at Thom Hartmann. He kept saying that we couldn't means test Social Security (bad idea or not is beside the point) because "if we means test it willl become a welfare program and it will be easier for the evil Republicans to cut it". He was saying this in the same news article where Obama was sponsoring his Grand Bargain - where he wanted to cut Social Security to… uh, be able to say he was reducing the national budget deficit? Buy a few more drones? Pay for the surge in Afghanistan?
Well tonight I was watching a video by The Humanist Report taling about Hawaii's universal basic income. No specifics have come up yet, but THR argued, guess what? Everyone had to get the same amount or the public wouldn't support it.
I propose the following little morality play. I call it "Capitalism in the real world":
Government: Here Mr. Middle Class, here's $12,000.
Landlord: Hey, I hear you just got a $1000 a month raise. Next month your rent goes up $1000 a month.
Grocer: Oh goodie! Now I can charge $15 a pound for hamburger, and $7 for a loaf of bread, and…
Mr. Middle Class: Hey Boss, there's some mistake. My paycheck is short $300 this week.
Boss: That's right. Take it or leave it chump!
Who doesn't see that coming? Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder?
A city in Canada tried what I call universal MINIMUM income -no strings money to what we would call welfare recipients equal to their welfare payment. It was a roaring success And nobody resented it. Last year (?) Switzerland voted down a UBI bill that would have included everyone. I hear Finland is trying a program that I think is UMI rather than UBI. Messaged properly I think UMI would be more popular than UBI, and certainly less dangerous.
My suggestion is to raise the personal deduction to say $25,000 and make it refundable. Everyone gets at least $25,000 to live on. Bosses would have to pay minimum wage workers more than $15 an hour and skilled workers would be at worst unaffected, because no one would be able to raise the rent or grocery bill or mortgage payment, as those are tied to what the middle class can afford, not the lowest 20%.
Comments
You are proposing
Everyone get the same amount- 25k.
Social security pays out based on what you paid in. It isn't means tested. Everyone gets something even if they never paid in. It might not be a monthly check, but they will get health care - Medicaid as opposed to Medicare.
Means testing leaves someone out, creates resentment among some that results in less popular support, and makes a program easier to cut because divide and conquer.
U Michigan is proposing to give everyone with an income below 65k free tuition. I assume they mean family - just like PELL. Total bull shit. If I make 66k I can afford to pay and they can't? While U Michigan takes MI tax money, it passes over qualified in state tuition MI students to enroll more international and out state higher tuition students. Now they want to give away more money to some families, Michigan residents or not, to further exacerbate this trend. I support free college for all, but Michigan can shove this new welfare program where the sun doesn't shine. I am tired of everyone benefitting from my tax dollars but me and mine.
See how that works?
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
No, I don't see how it works
because it doesn't. I won't resent it that the person next door is safe in that he will have at least enough to live on, especially if I have the same guarantee,even if I don't use it. I did resent it when Barack Obama, worth an estimated $12.2 million, (interesting factoid: Obama was probably the poorest man ever elected president, but thanks to things like his book deals he became wealthy while in office) tried to cut my Social Security, and it didn't make me feel any better knowing that he would take a cut as well.
Actually I agree with you about the university. The cutoff is arbitrary and divisive. But education and food are different things. Everyone should be able to educate himself, but everyone has to have a minimum amount of food. Everyone has to have a place to live. Don't tell me I can't have a floor unless we both get a house, that's just an excuse to deny both of us.
On to Biden since 1973
Did you not give everyone a
25k tax credit? Even Bill gates will qualify for a tax credit at the same rate of 25. What you are proposing isn't means tested that I can see.
I do not disagree with the idea of a guaranteed minimum income. I disagree that means testing doesn't matter. It does for the reason I stated.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
My terminology is bad.
I meant a floor income of $25k. By the way, a person making $30k pays $5000 in income and FICA taxes, so $25k tax free is the same after tax as $15 an hour.
On to Biden since 1973
Our capitalist system will never willingly incorporate
the socialist tenet of a no strings attached guaranteed basic income. That would be akin to expecting a Lion to accept tofu as real food, or to agree to go hungry so that the Springbuck population can enjoy a long safe life.
Capitalism, in the way in which it is practiced here today, is based on selfishness, greed, and exponential income inequality. It is decidedly not about evening the playing field or giving without expecting something in return. It is a perfect expression of the American Spirit, you know, the one that comitted genocide of the indigenous population and embraced the notion of Manifest Destiny to cover their crime.
I expect a head fake by the D Team toward a kinder, gentler concern for the lesser citizenry, followed by the excuse that the R Team meanies just won't permit it because of that new evil country we need to invade.
“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Not to be judgmental, but
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG7w3Oey3xs
On to Biden since 1973
AAAAAAAAAGH.
I clicked on that. And my HRC rage has now flared up again.
Seriously, HOW THE #*@% did anyone watch that -- her voice, her stabby finger -- and feel inspired? How do people still defend her?
(If you'll pardon me, I will now go stab my eye out with a rusty spork).
Tax rebate
Nearly one in four households (not individuals but all the persons living in a single household) earns less than $25,000 per year. These households are struggling to make ends meet before taxes. A tax rebate is not the same thing as a guaranteed minimum income, no strings attached. One study has shown that even at a $15 per hour minimum wage, most households cannot afford rent on an apartment in the lower 40% of rents without additional help.
As automation and outsourcing removes more and more well paying jobs, we must be able to guarantee the right of our citizens to live in a safe environment which means we should provide a guaranteed minimum living income.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Some things are certain
1 No matter what the forces of greed and class bigotry will say whatever they can think of to "prove" it won't work - "working people won't go for it" "it will make people lazy and nothing will ever get done" All these arguments are based on the assumption that everyone is a walking embodiment of the 7 deadly sins and completely incapable of redemption.
2 We can't afford it. "If you took all the rich people's money and gave it all to the poor they would still be poor." So said Huey Long in the mid 1930s. It was wrong then, and today the Walton family alone could eliminate poverty in America.
3 Prices are set by what the buyer can pay. That is the principle behind single payer. Canadians only pay half what Americans pay because Canadians are only willing to pay half as much and are willing to stand up for it. Can't afford the rent on $25k a year (or $30k or $35k or whatever you want to say) Only because not enough people stand up and say that's the landlord's problem, that's all we're paying.
On to Biden since 1973
You aren't pissed at Thom Hartmann.
You're pissed at Franklin Roosevelt. People suggested means testing Social Security at the time. Roosevelt said as soon as you means test it it looks like a welfare program and it will get cut. Roosevelt said everybody pays and everybody gets paid. (There actually is something like means testing on the payout side. Social Security pays everyone more for the first dollar on which they are taxed than for taxes collected on dollars above a certain level.)
For 80 years destroying Social Security has been the holy grail of conservatives. It endures. Franklin Roosevelt built well. If it ain't broke . . .
Legitimate argument
But it can only be made because when Obama offered to destroy Social Security for the sake of austerity he said it with a black face. The real unemployment rate (including the catastrophically underemployed and the discouraged and the incarcerated) is estimated at as high as 23%, and by the way, they have families. It is broken, and just because we aren't able to admit it yet doesn't make it fixed.
On to Biden since 1973
Lots of things about the economy
are broken, particularly the way the government has become a machine for sucking money out of the middle class and the poor to give to the rich. But Social Security isn't among the broken things.
I see the value of guaranteed income, but I worry that it will bifurcate society into two groups, the workers and the (choose your pejorative term). Think of the cartoon Andy Capp, where a large number of English people spend a good portion of their lives on the dole with just enough money to hit the pub for beer and darts.
Rather than a guaranteed income for those able to work I would prefer to see a phased in shrinking of the work week. Reduce "full-time" to 37.5 hours/week, then 35 and as robots kick in even fewer. I can already hear critics talking about the makers and the takers with a guaranteed income. I don't expect the guarantee to keep up with gains made by workers, limited as they may be.
And how much poverty
is caused by people who can't find work because millions of other people are working 2 and 3 jobs? If I'm only making $10.25 an hour do you really think I can only work 35 hours a week? I used to think like that, but it's only a stop-gap. As much as70% of all jobs today are vulnerable to automation - including things like chemical engineering! I have a friend who had to retire early because someone with an iPad could do his job. (well, someone right out of college, but that's just because employers are still demanding certification to keep out the hordes) You're fighting to prop up a system, but all you're really doing is piling up the rubble and calling it a wall.
On to Biden since 1973
That pile of rubble
is a RETIREMENT program. You don't seem to get that. It is keeping millions of Americans out of poverty.
The lower the number of hours in a full-time work week the more human beings need to be employed to do any set of tasks. Obviously, the minimum wage will need to be increased and benefits will need to be based on the new full-time week. A substantial premium for overtime will need to be exacted to lessen the incentives to continue getting work out of a smaller group of people.
But if you can't get a minimum wage increase you surely can't get guaranteed income.
And actually I am pissed off at FDR
When I was in my twenties and thirties I would have killed that so of a bitch - if I could have afforded to buy bullets after paying the self employment tax. But now that I'm older and wiser I realize that Daniel Patrick Moynahan was the greater evil.
On to Biden since 1973