This is specifically for liberals and especially for liberals who are panicked about Donald Trump being elected President: What do you think about the right to bear arms now? Perhaps you don't understand. I have heard your arguments favoring strict gun control. I have hacked many of them to pieces. No, our Founding Fathers were not talking exclusively about an armed militia. If you read the records of how our nation was founded, you would know that the right to bear arms was prompted as a complex combination of many factors, including the fact that it was associated with aristocracy in Europe and it was used by most European governments as a way of keeping the "rabble" under control. The final argument, which I have not really touched on much, is that our current government is so pure and good that the right to bear arms is no longer a necessary right to keep the government accountable to the people. So, what do you think about the right to bear arms now?
Personally, I don't think Trump is going to be some fascist dictator that tries to take over America. He is the President. The power of the President is far more limited than most people believe. Our government was specifically designed with checks and balances. If Trump does try anything extreme, Congress has the power to prevent it. Yes, Congress is Republican controlled. That does not mean they are stupid though. There is only so much damage they will let him do, and in my personal opinion, we need stuff to get broken, so that someone can fix it right. The Democrats sure are not going to get rid of Obamacare, but maybe if Trump does, they will eventually replace it with something that actually works. That said though, let's entertain this idea that Trump might try something bad and actually succeed.
If Trump makes a power play to wrest control from other parts of the government what do we do? Yes, I have heard some of you liberals suggest that this is a serious possibility. While I don't believe that it is, I am willing to entertain the idea. Some of you have tried to tell me that the right to bear arms is no longer important precisely because this sort of thing could never happen. You have told me that you have complete faith in our government. So, what about now? Do you still think that it could never happen? Do you still think that we should take all the guns away?
I don't know what you think, and honestly it does not really matter right now (at least till the next election). Might I suggest that you rethink your position on this though. Yes, guns are dangerous. So are cars, and cars kill many times more people than guns. Kitchen knives are also dangerous, and they injure many many times more people than guns. The fact is, freedom is not free. The freedom of this nation was payed for with blood. Since it was founded, the sacrifice of human lives has been required many times to maintain our freedom. Yes, some deaths may have been prevented by taking away our guns. How many more deaths would have been allowed to occur though? One of the most common places for people to commit mass shootings now days has been schools, because they know no one else will have a gun. In Europe we are seeing terrorist shooting sprees that just don't happen in the U.S., because terrorists know that any American adult could be carrying a gun and use it to cut their crime short. Most importantly though, can we really trust that our government would be the same if it did not have to worry about the fact that millions of Americans are armed? Perhaps our government would still be the same, but a recent President boldly told Congress that the American people cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Can we really trust that people like this would not have taken greater advantage of us, if we did not have access to guns? Can you trust that our current President will never do something that could require the people to assert their right to be governed as they choose?
I doubt that Trump will go so far off the deep end that the American people will need to use guns to assert their authority, but what if? If the people of this country can elect Donald Trump to be President, is it not possible that they could also put just the wrong people in Congress that our freedom might be put in jeopardy? The right to bear arms is complicated. It is what separates the U.S. from countries with a formal aristocracy. It ensures a certain level of classlessness. It gives us greater ability to protect ourselves. It also gives us a certain level of insurance against corrupt government. Conservatives have understood this for centuries. Perhaps now liberals can have a greater appreciation for the right to bear arms?
26 March 2017
17 March 2017
Real Poverty
What is poverty? According to the Federal government, it is less than $12,000 a year for a single person, less than $13,000 a year for a single person in Hawaii, or less than $15,000 a year for a single person in Alaska. Aside from the fact that real research suggests these numbers are low by about half, I think the government completely misunderstands poverty.
Poverty is less about income and more about living conditions. Income certainly affects living conditions, but it is not just about income. Poverty is also about things like human dignity and financial security. In fact, poverty is more about human dignity and financial security than it is about income. These are two things that our current welfare system actually makes worse.
Poverty is very close to slavery, in that it undermines dignity, and it makes financial security depend heavily on factors beyond one's control. It is even more like slavery in the fact that those who are in poverty often get stuck doing work they hate, because the risk involved in quitting to find a better job is too high. People in poverty tend to make bad decisions for a variety of reasons. One is that when human dignity has already been undermined, there is little incentive to consider decisions more carefully, and when you have nothing to begin with, there is little risk associated with making unwise decisions. Lack of human dignity is also associated with depression and other mental illnesses.
Financial security is actually closely related to health, as well as decision making. Those who lack financial security tend to make a lot more important decisions that those who have it. People who have financial security can make mistakes without dramatic consequences that would devastate someone without financial security if the wrong choice was made. Research has shown that the human brain has a limited capacity for making high stress decisions like this. Once that limit is reached, a person becomes far more likely to make bad choices. Further, lack of financial security creates an enormous amount of stress, and the type of stress created is associated with significantly shortened life span as well as a number of chronic illnesses.
Human dignity and financial security are so important it would not be unreasonable to place them above rights like freedom of speech, personal property, and such, if it is possible to guarantee them in the first place. At least in first world nations, it is possible to guarantee these rights.
How the Federal government deals with poverty should take these things into account. Requiring people to confess that they are poor and to share all of their financial details with another person to get government welfare assistance infringes on human dignity. Requiring poor people to use a food stamp card that tells everyone watching that they are poor (including the cashier) infringes on human dignity as well. A welfare system that provides only medical care and food for most poor people denies them financial security, and restrictions on food stamps in particular makes them especially ineffective at providing financial security, because they cannot be used where they are really needed. Income restrictions on welfare that leave gaping holes also prevent welfare from providing financial security. Financial security is so important to people that they will deliberately limit how much they earn, so that they can stay on welfare, because welfare is more stable than employment, and earning too much will reduce welfare by enough to reduce total income. This is especially pronounced with the Medicaid system, where standard health insurance generally costs more than $80 a month for one person (through an employer), which is almost a $1,000 a year drop and often occurs with a raise that only increases yearly income by less than half that. Further, since most poor people don't have employer provided healthcare plans, the cost of insurance is as much as 2 to 4 time that, making Medicaid a better option than even a fairly large raise.
The only system that deals with all of this effectively is a universal basic income. Universal means everyone gets it, rich or poor. This is essential to the human dignity part. If everyone gets it, then there is no indignity for a poor person when someone discovers they are getting. Basic income means enough money to survive on, without any amount of earned income. This provides financial security. In fact, it provides financial security to everyone, rich or poor. Occasionally a rich person makes a major investment that does not pan out, and when that happens that person can go from rich to poor very quickly. Everyone needs a safety net. Basic income also provides a safety net for businesses, because normally an economic downturn or natural disaster means that no one in an area can afford to buy anything, and this causes businesses to collapse. A basic income guarantees that people will have the money that they need to spend, and in turn that means that they will have the money necessary to support the businesses that need it to survive. A universal basic income not only provides an economic safety net for individuals, it provides one for businesses and for the entire U.S. economy. A universal basic income would make recessions and depressions extremely difficult to even occur, because it interrupts the feedback loop that allows them in the first place.
The fact is, a universal basic income is the only reasonable way to actually alleviate poverty. Even the most robust welfare system cannot guarantee human dignity, and any need based welfare system will fail to fully provide financial security. A universal basic income can provide both of these things to everyone, at a lower cost than any other option.
Poverty is less about income and more about living conditions. Income certainly affects living conditions, but it is not just about income. Poverty is also about things like human dignity and financial security. In fact, poverty is more about human dignity and financial security than it is about income. These are two things that our current welfare system actually makes worse.
Poverty is very close to slavery, in that it undermines dignity, and it makes financial security depend heavily on factors beyond one's control. It is even more like slavery in the fact that those who are in poverty often get stuck doing work they hate, because the risk involved in quitting to find a better job is too high. People in poverty tend to make bad decisions for a variety of reasons. One is that when human dignity has already been undermined, there is little incentive to consider decisions more carefully, and when you have nothing to begin with, there is little risk associated with making unwise decisions. Lack of human dignity is also associated with depression and other mental illnesses.
Financial security is actually closely related to health, as well as decision making. Those who lack financial security tend to make a lot more important decisions that those who have it. People who have financial security can make mistakes without dramatic consequences that would devastate someone without financial security if the wrong choice was made. Research has shown that the human brain has a limited capacity for making high stress decisions like this. Once that limit is reached, a person becomes far more likely to make bad choices. Further, lack of financial security creates an enormous amount of stress, and the type of stress created is associated with significantly shortened life span as well as a number of chronic illnesses.
Human dignity and financial security are so important it would not be unreasonable to place them above rights like freedom of speech, personal property, and such, if it is possible to guarantee them in the first place. At least in first world nations, it is possible to guarantee these rights.
How the Federal government deals with poverty should take these things into account. Requiring people to confess that they are poor and to share all of their financial details with another person to get government welfare assistance infringes on human dignity. Requiring poor people to use a food stamp card that tells everyone watching that they are poor (including the cashier) infringes on human dignity as well. A welfare system that provides only medical care and food for most poor people denies them financial security, and restrictions on food stamps in particular makes them especially ineffective at providing financial security, because they cannot be used where they are really needed. Income restrictions on welfare that leave gaping holes also prevent welfare from providing financial security. Financial security is so important to people that they will deliberately limit how much they earn, so that they can stay on welfare, because welfare is more stable than employment, and earning too much will reduce welfare by enough to reduce total income. This is especially pronounced with the Medicaid system, where standard health insurance generally costs more than $80 a month for one person (through an employer), which is almost a $1,000 a year drop and often occurs with a raise that only increases yearly income by less than half that. Further, since most poor people don't have employer provided healthcare plans, the cost of insurance is as much as 2 to 4 time that, making Medicaid a better option than even a fairly large raise.
The only system that deals with all of this effectively is a universal basic income. Universal means everyone gets it, rich or poor. This is essential to the human dignity part. If everyone gets it, then there is no indignity for a poor person when someone discovers they are getting. Basic income means enough money to survive on, without any amount of earned income. This provides financial security. In fact, it provides financial security to everyone, rich or poor. Occasionally a rich person makes a major investment that does not pan out, and when that happens that person can go from rich to poor very quickly. Everyone needs a safety net. Basic income also provides a safety net for businesses, because normally an economic downturn or natural disaster means that no one in an area can afford to buy anything, and this causes businesses to collapse. A basic income guarantees that people will have the money that they need to spend, and in turn that means that they will have the money necessary to support the businesses that need it to survive. A universal basic income not only provides an economic safety net for individuals, it provides one for businesses and for the entire U.S. economy. A universal basic income would make recessions and depressions extremely difficult to even occur, because it interrupts the feedback loop that allows them in the first place.
The fact is, a universal basic income is the only reasonable way to actually alleviate poverty. Even the most robust welfare system cannot guarantee human dignity, and any need based welfare system will fail to fully provide financial security. A universal basic income can provide both of these things to everyone, at a lower cost than any other option.
Freedom or Food Stamps
Food stamps come with a bunch of restrictions. The most obvious is that they can only be spent on food. They are also restricted to food items that are not "hot foods". In some places, food stamps cannot be used to buy high sugar foods, like soda. Some would like to further restrict them to "non-luxury" foods, or, more accurately stated, low class foods, as if poor people were criminals who deserve some kind of beans and bread prison diet. On the surface, perhaps this seems like a good idea, but in reality, it is terrible.
The first problem with restricting what food stamps can be spent on is cost. Regulations are never free. Enforcing food stamp restrictions is expensive. In fact, there is some evidence that all of the restrictions we place on welfare in general cost almost as much as the welfare money that is actually distributed to poor people. Enforcing food stamp restrictions is just the tip of the iceberg though. The government has to spend a lot of money on audits and such, to make sure sellers honor the restrictions. The sellers themselves also have to pay though. It takes a lot of work sorting what can and cannot be bought with food stamps, so that point of sale systems can apply charges correctly. If an item is incorrectly marked as food in the system, that could result in a big fine or losing the ability to accept food stamps at all. Even worse, if an eligible food item is not marked correctly (and sadly, this actually happens all the time in stores that sell both hot and cold food products), it causes major inconvenience to customers, and it requires extra labor of employees to compensate for the error every time someone tries to buy the product on food stamps until it is fixed in the system. Restrictions on food stamps are costly to both the government enforcing them and to the businesses that have to do extra work to deal with them.
The second problem with food stamps is need. Food pantries, soup kitchens, and other sources of healthy food are readily available to poor people in most places. Individuals that want to provide charity directly are more likely to be willing to provide food than anything else. The primary benefit of food stamps is dignity. Accepting charity directly can be humiliating, and few people who need charity deserve that kind of humiliation. Food stamps allow poor people to shop at stores, just like everyone else. Of course, the dignity that food stamps provide ends at the cash register, when the poor person has to pull out the card for everyone to see. As a need, food is not exactly difficult to come by. There are plenty of sources of free food for those in need. There are not plenty of sources of free shelter, free utilities, free transportation, free clothing, free toiletries, and so on. Food stamps provide access to something that poor people generally already have sufficient access to, and they neglect the real needs, like rent.
The third problem with food stamps is human dignity and privacy. Paying with cash, check, debit, or credit reveals very little about your financial situation to others. Paying with food stamps is like shouting, "Hey, I am poor!" to everyone who is watching. While it may be reasonable to deprive dangerous criminals of human dignity, poor people have already lost enough dignity. We don't need to take any more.
The justifications for having and restricting food stamps in the first place may seem reasonable to anyone who has not had to use them. Poor people need food, so give them a resource that can be used to buy food. We can add restrictions to guarantee they don't abuse it and use it to buy anything except food. This will guarantee that poor people will have enough to eat. Unfortunately, this assumes that food is the only thing poor people need. The justification attempts to cover this by suggesting that when poor people have their food covered, they can use the money they would have spent on food on other things. This is honestly a really bad math error. Consider, if a poor person has an income of $100 a month, and you give them $200 a month in food stamps, that does not suddenly free up $200 a month for the person, because there is not $200 a month in the first place! Additionally, even if there was $200 a month to begin with, $400 a month is still not enough to live on, and perhaps that person was wise enough with money to only be spending $100 a month on food to begin with, which still only frees up $100 a month. And like I said before, food is the easiest necessity for poor people to get for cheap or free. The fact is, it just does not add up.
It gets worse though. The primary justification for restricting food stamps is the assumption that people will spend the money on things other than food otherwise. Is there something wrong with that? First, consider, if a person is starving, what is the highest priority, food, or something else? If people need food and have enough money to buy it, they will! If people are spending food stamp money on things other than food, it means that those things are more important than food. In other words the primary justification for restricting food stamps to food is that poor people are too stupid to feed themselves when they need it. News flash: People who don't eat die. If poor people were too stupid to eat, they would already be dead. Honestly, this justification suggests that our government officials who setup this system are actually stupider than the people they think they are helping with it.
The same applies to the hot food restriction. The justification here is that if hot foods are allowed, people will use food stamps to buy expensive fast food, instead of cheaper unprepared food (like grocery store sushi, that is allowed...). This does not seem to be a well known fact, but most poor people do not spend all of their time being lazy. Research has found that most poor people have less free time than anyone else. Being poor is a lot of work. Attempting to force poor people to buy cheaper foods that have to be prepared at home is actually a liability (and it does not work, as there is plenty of cold prepared food available...). Even soup kitchens do better than this. If poor people want to spend their food stamps on fast food, let them. Some of them need the time it saves, and those who don't will learn from their mistakes if buying more expensive fast food results in starving for the last few days of the month. Again, there are plenty of sources of food. Preventing poor people from buying fast food (or expensive luxury foods) is not going to make sure they don't starve. It just makes sure they never learn to budget their money.
I want to describe my personal experience now. I am not ashamed to say that my family is on food stamps. I won't say how much, but with two parents and six children, we get a lot of food stamp money. Being Mormon, we believe in having a reasonable amount of food storage. We don't have room for the recommended year worth, but we have several bags of rice and some paint buckets full of various other long shelf life foods, as well as as a chest freezer with a decent selection of meat and other perishables (including frozen vegetables, lest you think we don't eat healthy foods). We were able to build up this food storage because we get far more food stamps than we strictly need. While it is not technically allowed, we have been known to give some of our food to people who are literally starving but don't qualify for food stamps (on several occasions, pregnant women who cannot afford protein). I am thankful that we get more food stamps than we need, but it would be even better if it were just given as cash. I am dramatically underpaid for some fairly important work, but if we can pay off our mobile home, then our rent drops to around $300 a month. Even on my low income, we can survive with only $300 a month lot rent. At the rate it is going though, it will be 3 years before it is paid off, so we have to rely on food stamps and delay important things like car repairs. If food stamps were distributed as cash, with no strings attached, we could still eat perfectly fine, and we could afford car repairs, and we could pay off our house a year or two earlier, making us financially stable in half the time. Yes, if we did this, we would not be able to help others as much, at least, not until the house was paid off, but we could put ourselves into a situation where we could ultimately help others more and provide our six children with a better environment and a better education. We would also be more financially secure, which would give me more time and money to work on starting my own business. It is true that many poor people don't have the same aspirations I do, but I can tell you, I know a lot of poor people, and a majority of them are trying to get themselves into better situations, and the main factor preventing them is lack of time and money. Converting food stamps to a cash payout would help all of us immensely.
The takeaway here is, we could save money, help poor people more effectively, and treat them better, if we just gave them cash. We could easily give up food stamps in exchange for freedom, just by giving poor people the cash up front, instead of making them jump through hoops just to get food that they could easily get somewhere else. Welfare should be about freedom, not about forcing people to live the way we think they deserve.
The first problem with restricting what food stamps can be spent on is cost. Regulations are never free. Enforcing food stamp restrictions is expensive. In fact, there is some evidence that all of the restrictions we place on welfare in general cost almost as much as the welfare money that is actually distributed to poor people. Enforcing food stamp restrictions is just the tip of the iceberg though. The government has to spend a lot of money on audits and such, to make sure sellers honor the restrictions. The sellers themselves also have to pay though. It takes a lot of work sorting what can and cannot be bought with food stamps, so that point of sale systems can apply charges correctly. If an item is incorrectly marked as food in the system, that could result in a big fine or losing the ability to accept food stamps at all. Even worse, if an eligible food item is not marked correctly (and sadly, this actually happens all the time in stores that sell both hot and cold food products), it causes major inconvenience to customers, and it requires extra labor of employees to compensate for the error every time someone tries to buy the product on food stamps until it is fixed in the system. Restrictions on food stamps are costly to both the government enforcing them and to the businesses that have to do extra work to deal with them.
The second problem with food stamps is need. Food pantries, soup kitchens, and other sources of healthy food are readily available to poor people in most places. Individuals that want to provide charity directly are more likely to be willing to provide food than anything else. The primary benefit of food stamps is dignity. Accepting charity directly can be humiliating, and few people who need charity deserve that kind of humiliation. Food stamps allow poor people to shop at stores, just like everyone else. Of course, the dignity that food stamps provide ends at the cash register, when the poor person has to pull out the card for everyone to see. As a need, food is not exactly difficult to come by. There are plenty of sources of free food for those in need. There are not plenty of sources of free shelter, free utilities, free transportation, free clothing, free toiletries, and so on. Food stamps provide access to something that poor people generally already have sufficient access to, and they neglect the real needs, like rent.
The third problem with food stamps is human dignity and privacy. Paying with cash, check, debit, or credit reveals very little about your financial situation to others. Paying with food stamps is like shouting, "Hey, I am poor!" to everyone who is watching. While it may be reasonable to deprive dangerous criminals of human dignity, poor people have already lost enough dignity. We don't need to take any more.
The justifications for having and restricting food stamps in the first place may seem reasonable to anyone who has not had to use them. Poor people need food, so give them a resource that can be used to buy food. We can add restrictions to guarantee they don't abuse it and use it to buy anything except food. This will guarantee that poor people will have enough to eat. Unfortunately, this assumes that food is the only thing poor people need. The justification attempts to cover this by suggesting that when poor people have their food covered, they can use the money they would have spent on food on other things. This is honestly a really bad math error. Consider, if a poor person has an income of $100 a month, and you give them $200 a month in food stamps, that does not suddenly free up $200 a month for the person, because there is not $200 a month in the first place! Additionally, even if there was $200 a month to begin with, $400 a month is still not enough to live on, and perhaps that person was wise enough with money to only be spending $100 a month on food to begin with, which still only frees up $100 a month. And like I said before, food is the easiest necessity for poor people to get for cheap or free. The fact is, it just does not add up.
It gets worse though. The primary justification for restricting food stamps is the assumption that people will spend the money on things other than food otherwise. Is there something wrong with that? First, consider, if a person is starving, what is the highest priority, food, or something else? If people need food and have enough money to buy it, they will! If people are spending food stamp money on things other than food, it means that those things are more important than food. In other words the primary justification for restricting food stamps to food is that poor people are too stupid to feed themselves when they need it. News flash: People who don't eat die. If poor people were too stupid to eat, they would already be dead. Honestly, this justification suggests that our government officials who setup this system are actually stupider than the people they think they are helping with it.
The same applies to the hot food restriction. The justification here is that if hot foods are allowed, people will use food stamps to buy expensive fast food, instead of cheaper unprepared food (like grocery store sushi, that is allowed...). This does not seem to be a well known fact, but most poor people do not spend all of their time being lazy. Research has found that most poor people have less free time than anyone else. Being poor is a lot of work. Attempting to force poor people to buy cheaper foods that have to be prepared at home is actually a liability (and it does not work, as there is plenty of cold prepared food available...). Even soup kitchens do better than this. If poor people want to spend their food stamps on fast food, let them. Some of them need the time it saves, and those who don't will learn from their mistakes if buying more expensive fast food results in starving for the last few days of the month. Again, there are plenty of sources of food. Preventing poor people from buying fast food (or expensive luxury foods) is not going to make sure they don't starve. It just makes sure they never learn to budget their money.
I want to describe my personal experience now. I am not ashamed to say that my family is on food stamps. I won't say how much, but with two parents and six children, we get a lot of food stamp money. Being Mormon, we believe in having a reasonable amount of food storage. We don't have room for the recommended year worth, but we have several bags of rice and some paint buckets full of various other long shelf life foods, as well as as a chest freezer with a decent selection of meat and other perishables (including frozen vegetables, lest you think we don't eat healthy foods). We were able to build up this food storage because we get far more food stamps than we strictly need. While it is not technically allowed, we have been known to give some of our food to people who are literally starving but don't qualify for food stamps (on several occasions, pregnant women who cannot afford protein). I am thankful that we get more food stamps than we need, but it would be even better if it were just given as cash. I am dramatically underpaid for some fairly important work, but if we can pay off our mobile home, then our rent drops to around $300 a month. Even on my low income, we can survive with only $300 a month lot rent. At the rate it is going though, it will be 3 years before it is paid off, so we have to rely on food stamps and delay important things like car repairs. If food stamps were distributed as cash, with no strings attached, we could still eat perfectly fine, and we could afford car repairs, and we could pay off our house a year or two earlier, making us financially stable in half the time. Yes, if we did this, we would not be able to help others as much, at least, not until the house was paid off, but we could put ourselves into a situation where we could ultimately help others more and provide our six children with a better environment and a better education. We would also be more financially secure, which would give me more time and money to work on starting my own business. It is true that many poor people don't have the same aspirations I do, but I can tell you, I know a lot of poor people, and a majority of them are trying to get themselves into better situations, and the main factor preventing them is lack of time and money. Converting food stamps to a cash payout would help all of us immensely.
The takeaway here is, we could save money, help poor people more effectively, and treat them better, if we just gave them cash. We could easily give up food stamps in exchange for freedom, just by giving poor people the cash up front, instead of making them jump through hoops just to get food that they could easily get somewhere else. Welfare should be about freedom, not about forcing people to live the way we think they deserve.
Basic Income Among the Rich
While reading a few articles today on basic income, I had a bit of an epiphany. Basic income is already all around us, and the vast majority of those who have it are also hard workers. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump are three of the highest profile Americans with a basic income. Basic income is a minimum income that an individual receives, regardless of any work they do. The three people mentioned above, along with a many other wealthy Americans, have a basic income in the form of interest and dividends from stocks, bonds, and other investments. For a basic income to be viable, it needs to provide enough income to survive on. According to the Federal government, this comes out to about $15,000 a year for one person, for the most expensive state (Alaska). The Federal poverty guidelines add $5,230 a year per additional person. Actual research (rather than the guesses of out-of-touch government officials) estimate that the actual poverty level is between $25,000 and $35,000 for one person, depending on what state that person lives in. According the Federal poverty level, this means that a basic income for one person is about $1,250 a month*, with $436 more per additional person. For the poverty level based on real evidence instead of arbitrary guesses, a basic income for one person would need to be about $2,000 a month, on the low end, and around $3,000 a month in more expensive places like northern Alaska. I don't recall whether the real research had data on income beyond one person.
So, using the Federal poverty level as a guideline (since my knowledge of the real poverty level is lacking beyond one person), a basic income must provide a minimum monthly income of $1,250 a month plus $436 for each person in the household beyond the first, or $15,000 a year, add $5,230 per person beyond the first. Assuming a 2% annual interest rate (you can get this on 5 year certificates of deposit at most credit unions and even better rates with real investments), each household would need $750,000 add $262,000 per person after the first invested, to have a basic income. Any millionaire with significant investments has a basic income that will support the millionaire and a spouse, without ever having to work or otherwise earn money. This covers far more than just the top 1% of Americans, and if you count retirement funds, nearly the entire upper class and part of the middle class have basic incomes ready for them when they retire, and that does not even count Social Security! My list above includes some of the richest people in the U.S., who are making enough income on investments alone to provide a basic income for hundreds or even thousands of other people, in addition to themselves.
The fact is, the rich already have basic incomes. Why is this important? It is important because one of the biggest arguments against a basic income is that people will quit working for a living if they get one, which would ruin the economy. So let's look at the evidence. The existing basic incomes in the U.S. are held almost exclusively by business owners, hard working CEOs, and investors. Yes, there are some freeloaders born into wealth who don't work, and there are some investors who stopped working when their investments starting making enough to live on, but a vast majority of people with a basic income actually work far too much!
I have already discussed plenty of other more direct evidence that basic income does not reduce work, but this leads to another conclusion: If basic income does reduce incentive to work enough that there is significant risk of economic collapse if we provide it to everyone, then we have a massive disaster on our hands. The people holding up the roof of our economy all have basic incomes! It is time to panic, because what happens when they realize that they don't have to work and suddenly all quit their jobs en-mass, leaving the economy to crumble? If basic income reduces incentive to work so dramatically, we have a moral responsibility to relieve these people of their fortunes immediately, otherwise we are in for a disaster far worse than could ever be predicted!
Yes, that was entirely sarcastic. Rich people with de facto basic incomes have been working hard for the entire history of humanity, and there is no reason to believe they will stop now. This should make it clear how utterly absurd even the suggestion that a basic income would destroy the economy is. I am not opposed to rich people, but I am opposed to rich people who already have basic incomes telling the rest of us that we can't have them, because we are too lazy to work if we did. This is toxic elitism at its finest. We are all humans here. If they can be productive despite having a basic income that is 10 to 100 times the poverty level, then the rest of us can be productive perfectly well with a basic income right above the poverty level. At least we still have an incentive to work beyond just getting a high score in some money game.
The fact is, our economy works because people don't lose motivation to work just because they have enough money to live on indefinitely. In fact, the evidence seems to suggest that the exact opposite is true. While there are rich people who freeload on their basic income earned by someone else, the people with the most money tend to be the hardest workers. Yes, some might consider this a cause and effect relationship of hard work resulting in greater fortune, however there are still plenty of hard workers in all of the income classes, and it does not take much to see that hard work does not correlate to income at all in our society, otherwise farmhands who work 16 hour days would be as rich as the typical CEO, and school teachers would get paid as much as engineers.
There is some irony here: The people who have basic incomes are the people who need it the least, and they are also the most likely to oppose a universal basic income, despite the fact that they stand to benefit from it the most. (More income means more spending, which means more money for investors, CEOs, and business owners.)
My challenge to the rich: If basic income is so dangerous to our economy, get rid of all of your investments, and never invest again. Otherwise, trust the rest of us, who have a real stake in this, to use a basic income as wisely as you seem to think you use yours. We are not asking for enough money to compete with you in your little money game; we are just asking for enough to feel some degree of financial security.
* I can tell you, where I currently live, which is not Alaska, $1,250 a month would pay for rent, utilities, and food, but it would not fully cover transportation, insurance, and other necessities. Note that I live in an area with a very low cost of living. I have lived in Alaska, and $1,250 a month in Alaska would cover rent and food, but not utilities (heating gets expensive) and definitely not transportation (you can afford food, but you cannot get to the store in the winter to buy it) or anything else (warm clothing...). Cost of living for one person in Alaska is at least $2,000 a month, and that assumes that person lives in the cheapest part of Anchorage and lives close enough to stores that transportation can be exclusively on bike, even in the coldest parts of the winter. The average is closer to $2,500 a month, up to at least $3,000 a month in the coldest parts of the state (where heating alone can eat well over $500 a month in the winter).
So, using the Federal poverty level as a guideline (since my knowledge of the real poverty level is lacking beyond one person), a basic income must provide a minimum monthly income of $1,250 a month plus $436 for each person in the household beyond the first, or $15,000 a year, add $5,230 per person beyond the first. Assuming a 2% annual interest rate (you can get this on 5 year certificates of deposit at most credit unions and even better rates with real investments), each household would need $750,000 add $262,000 per person after the first invested, to have a basic income. Any millionaire with significant investments has a basic income that will support the millionaire and a spouse, without ever having to work or otherwise earn money. This covers far more than just the top 1% of Americans, and if you count retirement funds, nearly the entire upper class and part of the middle class have basic incomes ready for them when they retire, and that does not even count Social Security! My list above includes some of the richest people in the U.S., who are making enough income on investments alone to provide a basic income for hundreds or even thousands of other people, in addition to themselves.
The fact is, the rich already have basic incomes. Why is this important? It is important because one of the biggest arguments against a basic income is that people will quit working for a living if they get one, which would ruin the economy. So let's look at the evidence. The existing basic incomes in the U.S. are held almost exclusively by business owners, hard working CEOs, and investors. Yes, there are some freeloaders born into wealth who don't work, and there are some investors who stopped working when their investments starting making enough to live on, but a vast majority of people with a basic income actually work far too much!
I have already discussed plenty of other more direct evidence that basic income does not reduce work, but this leads to another conclusion: If basic income does reduce incentive to work enough that there is significant risk of economic collapse if we provide it to everyone, then we have a massive disaster on our hands. The people holding up the roof of our economy all have basic incomes! It is time to panic, because what happens when they realize that they don't have to work and suddenly all quit their jobs en-mass, leaving the economy to crumble? If basic income reduces incentive to work so dramatically, we have a moral responsibility to relieve these people of their fortunes immediately, otherwise we are in for a disaster far worse than could ever be predicted!
Yes, that was entirely sarcastic. Rich people with de facto basic incomes have been working hard for the entire history of humanity, and there is no reason to believe they will stop now. This should make it clear how utterly absurd even the suggestion that a basic income would destroy the economy is. I am not opposed to rich people, but I am opposed to rich people who already have basic incomes telling the rest of us that we can't have them, because we are too lazy to work if we did. This is toxic elitism at its finest. We are all humans here. If they can be productive despite having a basic income that is 10 to 100 times the poverty level, then the rest of us can be productive perfectly well with a basic income right above the poverty level. At least we still have an incentive to work beyond just getting a high score in some money game.
The fact is, our economy works because people don't lose motivation to work just because they have enough money to live on indefinitely. In fact, the evidence seems to suggest that the exact opposite is true. While there are rich people who freeload on their basic income earned by someone else, the people with the most money tend to be the hardest workers. Yes, some might consider this a cause and effect relationship of hard work resulting in greater fortune, however there are still plenty of hard workers in all of the income classes, and it does not take much to see that hard work does not correlate to income at all in our society, otherwise farmhands who work 16 hour days would be as rich as the typical CEO, and school teachers would get paid as much as engineers.
There is some irony here: The people who have basic incomes are the people who need it the least, and they are also the most likely to oppose a universal basic income, despite the fact that they stand to benefit from it the most. (More income means more spending, which means more money for investors, CEOs, and business owners.)
My challenge to the rich: If basic income is so dangerous to our economy, get rid of all of your investments, and never invest again. Otherwise, trust the rest of us, who have a real stake in this, to use a basic income as wisely as you seem to think you use yours. We are not asking for enough money to compete with you in your little money game; we are just asking for enough to feel some degree of financial security.
* I can tell you, where I currently live, which is not Alaska, $1,250 a month would pay for rent, utilities, and food, but it would not fully cover transportation, insurance, and other necessities. Note that I live in an area with a very low cost of living. I have lived in Alaska, and $1,250 a month in Alaska would cover rent and food, but not utilities (heating gets expensive) and definitely not transportation (you can afford food, but you cannot get to the store in the winter to buy it) or anything else (warm clothing...). Cost of living for one person in Alaska is at least $2,000 a month, and that assumes that person lives in the cheapest part of Anchorage and lives close enough to stores that transportation can be exclusively on bike, even in the coldest parts of the winter. The average is closer to $2,500 a month, up to at least $3,000 a month in the coldest parts of the state (where heating alone can eat well over $500 a month in the winter).
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