BD: You say a single mother raising one child would receive $49200 annually. Seeing as the child is incapable of earning money in a market-based system ( as child labors laws have been rightfully enacted and most children lack the necessary skills to perform job-related tasks), then relating the money to the child is merely a means of twisting the monetary breakdown. The simple fact is the mother would essentially be receiving an effective salary of $23.65/hour. To call this a “Basic Income” is a tad misleading. I’ve been in the technical writing field for roughly ten years and I don’t even make that much. Even then, I was able to buy a house, buy a car, I keep my house stocked with food, I have luxuries like cable, internet, NetFlix, a computer, a video game system, and more, and I still have some left over. And that’s with 10 years experience in the field.
RG: This is a straw man argument. "A child is incapable of earning money" is not a completely true statement. A 15-year-old can get a job and work and earn some amount of income and is still considered a "child". Additionally, this amount of money is based on an inflationary model being applied to research that was conducted in 1969 and is being used as a baseline example. The "real" amount would need to be calculated. And yes, while this amount of money would allow you, a single male living in the northeast GA suburbs outside of the metro area, to live pretty comfortably, someone living inside the city or in another area of the country may not live as comfortably.
BD: True, and it brings up the discussion about when is a child no longer a child. In some cases 15-to-18-yr-olds are tried as adults in violent crimes. In some insurance situations, people as old as their early-20s can be counted as children for the sake of parental insurance. Based off my reading of your article, I was assuming a child to be under the age of 12 or 13, as it was written that the single mother was “raising” one child. We could probably discuss/debate at what point the “raising” of a child actually stops, but pretty much every region/culture/society will have differing opinions on that. The next issue would be “living comfortably.” As I said, the cost of living is so different region to region that determining a level of comfortable living becomes difficult. Also, I can guarantee you that one of the conservative/libertarian arguments to this plan would question why it is the role of government to provide a comfortable living for anyone? (Just saying).
RG: It shouldn't be viewed as the government is providing a comfortable living to anyone, because that is not really what is happening. What the government is providing is a basic level of economic freedom and mobility. Providing just enough to meet the most basic of human needs grants every citizen, rich or poor, the freedom to pursue their dreams/goals without having to really worry about where the next meal is coming from. It also, for the poor who are currently on welfare, frees the poor to make their own decisions regarding how they spend their money. This is also why I require a basic personal finance course, so that everyone is exposed to the concept of personal finance management. If everyone is receiving ~$1200 every 2 weeks from the government, they are able to provide their basic necessities and maybe have a little extra (some will have more, some less depending on where they live, but again, people now how the freedom to move from higher cost of living areas to lower cost of living if they want, even if jobs aren't immediately available.). Again, this entire system is 100% about returning power to the worker and the citizen, and wresting it from the corporations and politicians. When people have a level of basic economic freedom, they are not able to be controlled so easily. Businesses with poor working conditions, poor pay, etc will see their workers up and leave in search of better opportunities because those workers are no longer slaves to the low wages because they feel they have no real alternative.
BD: While I like the idea of requiring a personal finance course, I wonder how effective it would actually be. The basics of economic responsibility are taught throughout school if one is so inclined to learn them. A focused course would provide greater clarity. But certain people are already apprehensive about greater individual responsibility. Some people, no matter how many “life lessons” they experience, simply refuse to learn. I used to work with a guy whose wages were being garnished by the state, and he was married with two kids, yet he still found money to buy cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets. Like I said, some people just refuse to acknowledge the need for personal responsibility.
NATIONAL GBI
BD: Establishing a national GBI is difficult, because the basic cost of living in North Georgia is different from the cost of living in metro Boston is different from the cost of living in Billings, Montana. There would still be a necessarily high level of governmental oversight to maintain the requisite distinctions among the regions to properly fund and pay out such a system.
RG: Yes and no. It would require some up front research in order to determine the average costs of living in various parts of the country, but, in the end, every person would receive the exact same amount of GBI. That amount would be a national average cost of living. So, no matter where you live, you get the same GBI as everyone else. This accomplishes a few things: First, it cuts down on complexity and the necessity of extensive oversight. It also grants every citizen some amount of basic financial freedom and mobility. If a person is not happy with the cost of living in a state or area, they have the freedom to pick up and move somewhere else. If someone is not happy with the policies that are being implemented in their state or area, they can move and not have to worry about immediately needing a job. This should result in politicians and businesses needing to change their practices in order to attract citizens/workers to their towns and businesses.
BD: So everyone would receive the same GBI? If that’s so, then (to maintain our previous comparison) a person living in north GA would have greater financial freedom than a person living in Boston, if both receive the same amount of GBI. Just something to consider, since issues like this often bring up side-discussions of equality and fairness.
RG: Exactly, and that's the point. It forces cities, businesses, states, districts, etc. to actually have to compete for people. If cities want more workers, they will have to enact policies that attract those people, such as lowering the cost of living there, providing better education opportunities, providing better working opportunities, etc. Now that every adult citizen has some level of basic economic freedom/mobility, they will be able to move to states/cities that take better care of them. They aren't stuck somewhere because they have no savings and can't earn enough to save in their current job. Again, this provides freedom to the worker, freedom to the citizen, to really make of themselves what they want, where they want.
BD: Yeah, but the reason cost of living is higher in Boston than in north GA is simple: environment. It costs more to heat a house for longer periods of time during the year in Boston. Because of the more extreme temperatures of the area, infrastructure upkeep also costs more than north GA. Unfortunately, that’s not something that cities/states can control. Also, anywhere you have more people you will likewise have greater demand for necessities like food. Boston is much more densely populated than north GA, so demand is bound to be higher. Also, a sizeable portion of the population in the Boston area would be unable to grow their own food. That’s not really a problem in north GA. Given that more people are demanding certain products, the prices for those products will undoubtedly rise. Again, not something city/state can control without intruding into the business practices of individual merchants or corporations. Just things to consider.
LIBERALS & WAGES
BD: Your paragraph about liberal views on the GBI is kind of unsettling. Do liberals really want the wages of high-skilled workers to decline so that the wages of unskilled or semi-skilled workers can rise? That’s not right. The reason high-skill workers have higher wages is because they’ve invested time and effort into honing their skills. Why should an unskilled worker’s wages go up? Doesn’t the fact that they are unskilled mean they shouldn’t be paid the same as a skilled counterpart? If you were to join the satellite communications industry with no prior knowledge, do you really believe you should be paid similarly to me, seeing as I’ve been in the field for over 5 years?
RG: No, that is not the intent. It's not that liberals want high skill pay to decrease. Liberals want more people to be able to get into these fields. The reason high skill wages are so high is because there is not a saturation of workers to fill those positions. As people who are stuck in a low skill, low pay job gain the ability to leave that job and pursue higher education, the amount of high skill labor should increase because people are actually able to go to school and get the training they need. With a higher % of the population becoming able to fill these positions, the demand will go down and the average salaries should decrease a little. This is a net positive for society though because our labor force is not keeping up with technology and if we don't do something soon, unemployment rates are going to continue to rise regardless of what ideological policies you put in place simply because technology is going to replace more and more low skill/no skill jobs and those people are not going to have the training to take on higher skill jobs.
BD: I can see the value in this, but I think it also requires a refocus of our economy. We became a nation of mostly financial services a while back, and we stopped being the productive nation we once were. If we can recover some of that productivity then I believe that will be an asset just as valuable as your stated intent.
GOVERNMENTS & TAXATION
BD: You state that government involvement is lessened by this plan, yet at the same time your stated means of paying for it require greater government involvement in financial/economic matters. Giving government greater rein on levying taxes opens an ugly door…just like the rhetorical nonsense we saw with the ACA, where we were told it was not a tax, but the Supreme Court ratified it under Congress’s ability to levy and collect taxes. The possibility for corruption in the taxation process is scary. The tax code as a whole requires simplification and streamlining. The Carbon Tax, and similar taxes, give me cause to be wary. There was a fear during the establishment of the ACA that people would be taxed for the groceries they buy, if they did not purchase healthy-enough options. Any kind of taxation that is so closely tied to personal habits is just worrisome to me.
RG: I don't see this as expanding government. This would close tax loophole and simplify the tax code so that everyone is paying a flat standard tax on all non-GBI (including job income, capital gains, etc). There are some models of this system that even propose a complete elimination of income tax and instead taxing High Frequency Microtransactions that are conducted by wall street trading bots at a fraction of a penny per transaction. Sure, government can levy other taxes to help fund programs, but that's nothing that they can't do now. The carbon tax was just an example of a way to provide additional funding.
BD: I’ve long been in favor of eliminating income tax and developing some system of consumption taxation ( basically some form of Fair Tax). The trick to arguments like this, as with a statement I made above, is that both sides of the spectrum have championed key words/phrases/terms, but they’ve wrapped them inside these really nebulous definitions. “Fairness” is one such term, as many talking heads stress a system that is more fair, but they never define what “fair” means. “Tax loopholes” as you said, is another. It forces us to delve into the realm of “which loopholes in particular do we go after.” That’s why I favor a system of complete simplification and streamlining of the tax code.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
BD: If we’re really concerned with environmental issues, there are other steps we can take that don’t require government taking even more money from the people. Mandate that every building in a city have a garden of some kind on the roof. This produces oxygen and recycles carbon dioxide. It can also be used to provide food stuffs to various charitable institutions. Mandate that parking lots/decks have solar panels on site. Work harder on limiting deforestation in the name of “progress.” Much of this can be done without greedy politicians reaching into their constituency’s pockets.
RG: This is not really at all concerned with environmental issues and is in no way a point that I was trying to make in the article. This article is purely on providing a basic level understanding about what a GBI is, how it can be implemented, what benefits it provides, and how it would be paid for. That's it. Nothing more. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the carbon tax thing at all because it seems to have completely detracted you from the true goal of the paper.
BD: I wrote this as just an addendum and not really relating to the paper. My fault for not really clarifying that. I meant this more as a general statement on environmental issues, and not as a statement on your article.
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