No it isn't because we're not talking about communism, we are talking about UBI, can we please please please stop talking about communism finally? Unless you have some real reason to belive why UBI could lead to it. Communism is a philsophy, UBI a policy. Two very different things.
Did you actually bother reading what I said? It was an example of the type of people who use this rhetoric and "CAPITALISM" was there too? So why are you acting like I told you UBI was communism? I stated (in a previous post) that it could lead there, but not necessarily.
Or are you also one of those people that screamed Communism when Obama introduced his Affordable Healthcare Act a couple of years ago?
Could you please stop constantly referring to the USA and stop insulting my intelligence? It's utterly irrelevant to the discussion.
I didn't denny anything, I just said that it is an interesting concept to test, and money is the least of the issues that should hold it back when you consider how much is spend on all sorts of stuff. For the case you're wondering how it could be financed.
The least of the issues? No, it is a core issue of the system, since money needs to come from somewhere AND the value of said money must be protected from inflation. This is the fundamental issue which you're utterly ignoring.
Bill Gates (imagine that!) proposed a tax on robots/automatisation for example. That could help to finance it.
What's next Warren Buffet? Newsflash: rich people which will never in their life have any type of financial issue ever again are not really the best people to look at for advice on monetary policy. They are the least impacted by anything you say.
One advantage of the UBI is the fact that it removes a lot of bureaucracy, take Germany for example which has many different systems in place, for students, to jobless, single parents, etc. One income for everyone, would mean much less paper work and it would save some money here.
Yes, it can remove a lot of inefficiency, and destroy a lot of government jobs.
But that's nowhere near enough to pay everyone ~1500 euros a month untaxed.
It would probably demand a higher tax on rich and super rich people, but that's not going to give me sleepless nights.
Which are also the people with enough mobility to get the fuck out if you try to fuck them over like that.
Which brings us back to the necessity for a worldwide system with totalitarian power, as I've been saying over & over again.
But the question isn't if we can finance it or not, becuse we can when you consider how much money is generated by the financial market, like Wall Street for example, the question is do we want it? There is still not enough discussion about it.
Our banking (commercial and central) and investment system is a severely diseased abomination.
What you see as opression though is also known as 'regulations', at least if were talking about companies, and in many cases they make sense, like work safety, social security, environmental protections etc.
I'm not adverse to some regulation, but it's how you go about it that matters.
My country has an endless number of uncomprehensible laws, which is to be expected if you know that 75+% of our politicians are lawyers. Raising complexity is good for both themselves and the companies which they often represent (and get draft legislation from).
My point of view on regulation is a practical one. Say you want to legislate proper protective equipment for motorcyclists to protect people and to prevent undue costs on social security and health care due to accidents. You could say that everyone needs a EC rated helmet, long protective pants, ankle high boots, motorcycle gloves, and motorcycle jacket.
Or you could say that everyone must adhere to a minimum of protection for their eyes (since debris or insect in the eyes is likely to cause an accident) and that all the rest is free to chose for the cyclist IF his insurance is rated to pick up the bill in case of an accident.
If someone wants to ride around in a t-shit and sandals, that's fine by me, but he should not become a burden on society if he does crash. I would never ride without proper protective equipment, but I do not feel the need to force other people to ride to the same standard as I do. People should have freedom of choice, within reason.
This is a very different way to reason, and highly uncommon in legislative circles, sadly.
Again ask your self, who's going to be regulated here? Is it the average Joe working for 7$ per hour in Wall-Mart? Or is it a huge and large company like Apple, Google and other tech-companies that generate BILLIONS(!) of dollars while employing very few people, and we're not even really talking about regulations but simply taxations.
Do you not see the power you need to give the government to make this viable? And how that power could be so easily turned against the people?
As long as it hasn't been implemented on a national level, it will be hard to know what changes in prices could happen from it. But I doubt it would change THAT much, landlords and company owners have still to make a living as well and they want to make a profit, charging ALL of the people more than what they can afford, is going to hurt them as well. The Market like the housing market, might as well reach some equilibrium here where some areas will be priced to high, while others to low. I am not an economist and I can't say with a certainty what could happen. But it simply doesn't make sense as a landlord to demand more than what everyone has to offer.
But that's the thing, it's a simple law of supply and demand. Inflation would happen until what you buy now, is about as affordable with UBI. But since UBI injects ~1500 euros into everyone's wallets, prices will rising accordingly. So to prevent this, you need strict regulation and price fixing. This is simple economics.
Indida did a test that was similar to UBI once with positive results.
And it was an extremely flawed test as explained above previously?
The US would probably have to deal with more regulations, UBI would be easier for states like Germany, Sweden, France etc. since we already do have many regulations and a relatively high taxation - compared to the United States.
That would be a wrong assumption. Taxation in euroland is mostly focused on taxing people. UBI requires taxation to be levied hardest on companies, or your UBI would be worthless from the start. Giving money to the people you take money from would be rather silly.
As a result, your entire economic landscape would change.
Look who's talking, Suaside the super-economy-scientist
.
It doesn't take a scientist to see how flawed the test have been so far.
And yes, I did have some university level economic education. (which is kinda worthless for the most part since economics are far from an exact science and 99% of the economic "laws" which are taught do not work. at all.)
I am at least willing to DO and run some tests. Maybe we would have to produce 1 or 2 tanks less per year, but oh the horror!
And here we go again. Flawed tests and false equivalence.
No, a few tanks have nothing to do with your UBI budget. If you feel bad about spending some money on defense, you should leave NATO. Since you're a member, you have agreed to invest a given amount of money into defense. And your country (like mine btw) has been failing to meet the agreed upon level of funding for decades.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you don't, you'll eventually get eaten by someone who did prepare. Happy thoughts are not enough to keep the enemy at bay. You can argue about how much is enough, but there is no way to know ahead of time.
The thing is, we will never know it if we don't do it and see what happens. We are not even talking about the implementation right now, just that we need some data that economists and other scientists can work with.
But all that damn data would be worthless? UBI needs to be a self-sustaining closed system and none of the test protocols either carried out or proposed come even close to that?
