I’ve brought up basic income recently and this isn’t gonna change,
since I love the idea, so I feel like I should cover the Swiss vote, at
least a little bit. Unfortunately, it looks like the Swiss rejected it
by a margin of 22-78.
To be fair, I knew it was likely going to lose. However, I thought it
had a little more support than it did, with like 40% of people in favor
of it (EDIT: it turns out the basic income reddit sub misled me on this
number, it never had 40% support). Considering how more than 22% of
Americans will vote for Trump this November, this really shows how
overwhelming against the idea the Swiss were. Some people are calling it
a success, but I still think the numbers are too lopsided for it to be
considered one. While not official, even the US could likely garner at least 22% in favor of a proposal,
since the link I just posted shows up to 35% at least somewhat in favor
of a similar idea. So, we still have a lot of work to do to get this
popular.
I know it sounds like a crazy idea, since so much of our mainstream concepts of work and wealth distribution fly in the face of it, but I really do have to insist that it likely could be a very good idea if implemented correctly. In fairness to the Swiss proposal, I think the amounts were too high. I’d support something along the lines of $1000 a month to an adult and about 1/3 that to children which would amount to around where the federal poverty line is. Maybe a little less if I had to compromise (say, $750-800), whereas the Swiss proposal wanted to give people $2500 a month. CBS link above also shows that salaried workers likely wouldn’t get ANY money from this proposal, which I think is a huge reason people were against it. As I noted in my welfare fraud thread, in which I mused about conservative beliefs, I think most people vote with their pocketbooks, and I think that if we set up a system in such a way that it would benefit a majority of citizens, those citizens would support it, and it would be political suicide to mess with it. Kind of like social security. But if you have a system in which you have to give money you earned to someone else, for nothing in return, then people are likely going to see it as them subsidizing another person’s laziness. It looks like the Swiss proposal was not only very large and generous, but it gave little to working people. My own idea would have smaller amounts, and likely be structured similarly to the negative income tax or the earned income tax credit. For every dollar earned, you lose 40-50 cents of the benefit or something. This would have a better sense of distributive fairness to it, since only the top 20-30% of people would pay for it in net, and it would better encourage work ethic, since the financial reward for choosing work over non work is maintained. Both those who don’t work, and those who work but aren’t in the top 20-40% of the income ladder would likely benefit from such a proposal, either through receiving a partial income in net, or at the very least, a tax rebate to those much higher nominal taxes. Keep in mind, the larger the check is, the more it destroys work ethic, and the higher the clawback rate, the less incentive there is to work too. As a matter of fact, that’s a big problem with the American welfare system. And while I am fairly “anti work” in the sense that I believe the long term goal of society should trend toward working less and freeing people from work, I’m still a pragmatist about it. We still need work. The robots haven’t come for our jobs yet. The idea of some form of techno socialism in which robots produce everything we need and we don’t need to work isn’t here yet. So we need work as a matter of practicality. And as such, we still need a system that motivates people enough to get enough people working to meet our societal needs. Do we need everyone working? Heck no. I already explained the many problems with trying to make EVERYONE work elsewhere. But we still do need work, and as such, we still need to balance freedom to work and from work, with society’s practical needs. That being said, perhaps the problem with the Swiss proposal is that it was poorly structured in a way that it was too generous, and lent itself to the whole “makers vs takers” framing in which UBI was seen as subsidizing laziness at the expense of the working class, whereas a well crafted proposal would help both those with and without jobs on the whole. I’m just speculating here, but I do think that these are problems with the Swiss proposal that may have contributed to its failure.
I know it sounds like a crazy idea, since so much of our mainstream concepts of work and wealth distribution fly in the face of it, but I really do have to insist that it likely could be a very good idea if implemented correctly. In fairness to the Swiss proposal, I think the amounts were too high. I’d support something along the lines of $1000 a month to an adult and about 1/3 that to children which would amount to around where the federal poverty line is. Maybe a little less if I had to compromise (say, $750-800), whereas the Swiss proposal wanted to give people $2500 a month. CBS link above also shows that salaried workers likely wouldn’t get ANY money from this proposal, which I think is a huge reason people were against it. As I noted in my welfare fraud thread, in which I mused about conservative beliefs, I think most people vote with their pocketbooks, and I think that if we set up a system in such a way that it would benefit a majority of citizens, those citizens would support it, and it would be political suicide to mess with it. Kind of like social security. But if you have a system in which you have to give money you earned to someone else, for nothing in return, then people are likely going to see it as them subsidizing another person’s laziness. It looks like the Swiss proposal was not only very large and generous, but it gave little to working people. My own idea would have smaller amounts, and likely be structured similarly to the negative income tax or the earned income tax credit. For every dollar earned, you lose 40-50 cents of the benefit or something. This would have a better sense of distributive fairness to it, since only the top 20-30% of people would pay for it in net, and it would better encourage work ethic, since the financial reward for choosing work over non work is maintained. Both those who don’t work, and those who work but aren’t in the top 20-40% of the income ladder would likely benefit from such a proposal, either through receiving a partial income in net, or at the very least, a tax rebate to those much higher nominal taxes. Keep in mind, the larger the check is, the more it destroys work ethic, and the higher the clawback rate, the less incentive there is to work too. As a matter of fact, that’s a big problem with the American welfare system. And while I am fairly “anti work” in the sense that I believe the long term goal of society should trend toward working less and freeing people from work, I’m still a pragmatist about it. We still need work. The robots haven’t come for our jobs yet. The idea of some form of techno socialism in which robots produce everything we need and we don’t need to work isn’t here yet. So we need work as a matter of practicality. And as such, we still need a system that motivates people enough to get enough people working to meet our societal needs. Do we need everyone working? Heck no. I already explained the many problems with trying to make EVERYONE work elsewhere. But we still do need work, and as such, we still need to balance freedom to work and from work, with society’s practical needs. That being said, perhaps the problem with the Swiss proposal is that it was poorly structured in a way that it was too generous, and lent itself to the whole “makers vs takers” framing in which UBI was seen as subsidizing laziness at the expense of the working class, whereas a well crafted proposal would help both those with and without jobs on the whole. I’m just speculating here, but I do think that these are problems with the Swiss proposal that may have contributed to its failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment