Libertarian Thread # 3: Liberty will never die

Originally posted by JJLehto That's fair, and I can't debate it since that is simply your opinion. Obviously you are skeptical of the private sector/markets and my guess while you say "not fussed" you probably really want them to conflict with the private sector. Which is fine, I used to feel the same so I understand the notion fully. That being said, it's not like ALL government jobs would be minimum wage. There are "non JG" government jobs that still would exist, as they do now, that pay what they do. The JG would be a literal safety net that either A) helps you when needed while searching for private sector work, or B) exist for the "chronic unemployed' that already are on assistance. Needless to say I disagree with the last part, obviously there's variation but just from life experience I've seen no different between private and public sector effectiveness, and in terms of doing a job often public sector is worse. I think it's a pretty intriguing idea to be a true safety net in a market economy (long as strict standards are followed) but if you simply want less private more public, well that's that then Seems you have no real issue with the proposal per se, just that it's not government doing enough?

Yep yep - no issue with the proposal per se and I think that sort of safety net (whether UBI or JG) in a market economy is a very interesting way forward for the economic right and the more moderate left for very different reasons. My only real reservation is that I feel pretty strongly that a government should offer a living wage rather than the bare legal minimum wage, if only because there's a real disparity between the two here at the moment and you're only going to have to make up the difference with in-work benefits anyway unless you want to have a government systematically exploiting underpaid jobs.

(Well, I don't necessarily want a conflict between the two, rather I think the gov't should provide services on the criteria of them being essential or useful, being able to do them well and make them publicly available rather than just filling in for whatever the private sector doesn't find interesting - there were complaints before the whole Newscorp scandal broke here t'other year that the BBC news site was making it uncompetitively difficult for Murdoch to monetise The Times Online... it's probably true that it does but I don't think that's a good argument against having the BBC news operate in that area).

But yeah, like you guys I'm kind of drifting so far away from mainstream politics that I'm sort of trying to find ways for my own ideology to get snuck into what we have at the moment. I think the UBI and JG are both very interesting ways of doing that.

Originally posted by HarbouringTheSoul Originally posted by TGM: Orb Snip That doesn't happen with a cutoff either. To refer back to my earlier example, if you have a cutoff at 1,000$, that ensures that everyone has an income of at least 1,000$ per month. If you switch from a low-paying job to a higher-paying job, the worst that could happen to you is that it doesn't improve your effective income at all, but you will never be worse off. Originally posted by TGM: Orb Snip I thought a UBI, regardless of whether or not it has a cutoff, would do away with benefits entirely in exchange for a sum of money? Granted, I might be biased against the idea of UBI without a cutoff because of the situation in which I was first exposed to the idea. A party in Germany, called the Pirate Party, has recently added UBI to its party program. But not in order to simplify the welfare system, no, they want to give money to everyone on top of what's already happening. And to finance this, they want to drastically raise taxes. That immediately appeared to me as pointless and ineffective redistribution of wealth. If you want to give the poor more money, just give the poor more money. [/QUOTE Well, on the first one, cutoffs may result in someone having a choice between working a lot more hours for no net gain or just not working. Similarly, if you qualify for a variety of benefits, you may actually find a situation where going to work loses you enough varieties of welfare that it becomes counter-productive. I'm not sure I really buy that this is the problem with welfare systems at the moment rather than that there aren't enough good jobs but I think that's OK. On the second point, UBI doesn't have to do away with all benefits but if it does away with most of the conditional stuff we have now, it does mean that *everyone* knows how much someone on benefits is actually on a year. At the moment, it's all so convoluted it's very hard to have a reasonable discussion.

Well, on the first one, cutoffs may result in someone having a choice between working a lot more hours for no net gain or just not working. Similarly, if you qualify for a variety of benefits, you may actually find a situation where going to work loses you enough varieties of welfare that it becomes counter-productive. I'm not sure I really buy that this is the problem with welfare systems at the moment rather than that there aren't enough good jobs but I think that's OK. On the second point, UBI doesn't have to do away with all benefits but if it does away with most of the conditional stuff we have now, it does mean that *everyone* knows how much someone on benefits is actually on a year. At the moment, it's all so convoluted it's very hard to have a reasonable discussion.

I'd quite like a UBI and some elements of a universal welfare state (so, education, healthcare, child benefit). Alternatively, though, I'd like a communist state focussed on attempting to proliferate leisure time and better quality of life rather than GDP, so I don't think anyone in the thread's that aligned to me

@Lehto:

I think Labour here are angling on a plan where they're going to attempt to offer everyone some sort of job within two years instead of the Conservative attempt to make benefits too difficult to live on so people inspire themselves into making new jobs. It's a nice change.

I have reservations about the implementation you propose but I think that's just because I think gov't's got an obligation to be a good employer so pay a living wage rather than minimum wage etc etc. Also I generally find the public sector for all its sins tends to do things more cheaply, more accountably and better than the private sector when it's not faffed around with too much by political parties (case in point, BBC) so I'm not too fussed about it conflicting with them.


Edited by TGM: Orb - Yesterday at 19:31

It seems the UBI, in some form, is decently popular here. Or at least accepted as better than the welfare state, since I know many of ya here would probably want most welfare to be eliminated entirely.

On the notion of universal income, here's another intriguing idea to ponder:
Job Guarantee.
Not saying I'm for it, just wanna start discussion (we all agree too much now in here!)
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/03/mmp-blog-43-job-guarantee-basics-design-and-advantages.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee


Long story short: A job guarantee (at the minimum wage) for anyone who chooses.
Idea being it will provide jobs for anyone who wants, kinda like a UBI I guess but work is involved instead of simply given out.
It could be used to do things the private sector does not, at the minimum wage it would not cause incentive to stay there over choosing private sector work, would be run as a private sector job aka if you dont meet expectation you get fired, and supposedly (I need to read more about this) creates a natural inflation buffer and could even smoothen out that business cycle...

....jobs for anyone, without market distortion, without causing inflation(!?) which could let us reduce the welfare blanket mess. You know what they say about too good to be true!!
It's an interesting idea though, I just have some issues with in reality. Works on paper pretty swell, but keeping at minimum wage? If this is run by government we all know the incentive to raise wages...same with "honest work" in reality will people get fired or retained even if they schlep around? The author states somewhere it should be work not done in the private sector, which makes sense (just wanna be an alternative and not compete) but is there enough??

I think it'd have to be at minimum, and no benefits. Otherwise incentives could become perversed and the claim is to be just a "guarantee" of a job if needed. I think too much pay and benefits would obviously become competition for the private sector.


Edited by JJLehto - Yesterday at 19:26

Originally posted by Equality 7-2521 It would eliminate every bureaucracy with their staffs that have shop around prices, review applicants, blah blah blah, and it would slash the IRS staff needed since we would have a flat tax. Issuing the UBI doesn't really take much.

Quite.
Edit: NEVERMIND. I see my mistake.
Reading your response to Pat correctly now, yes UBI would be a drastic simplification.


Edited by JJLehto - May 22 2013 at 18:18

It would eliminate every bureaucracy with their staffs that have shop around prices, review applicants, blah blah blah, and it would slash the IRS staff needed since we would have a flat tax. Issuing the UBI doesn't really take much. 

Originally posted by HarbouringTheSoul The problem with UBI as I see it is that it wastes a lot of money on people who don't need it. UBI in its most basic form means that every citizen gets a basic income, regardless of whether they already have an income and how high it is. How is that basic income paid for? Taxes. Most personal taxes are directly or indirectly income-dependent, so above a certain level of income you have people who spend more money on UBI than they get in return. These people don't need the UBI; they already have a decent income by themselves. So all this UBI money that goes towards them is wasted money that could be better used by either lowering taxes or giving it to the people who actually need it. Aka what Michael Tanner is proposing. So as weird as it is to admit (I'm far from a libertarian), the radically libertarian Cato guy is better at being left-wing than the actual left wing.

Glad someone sees it!!!
The whole libertarian = right wing bs is, well bs.
Its been my opinion that a true liberal should espouse libertarianism, at least in some manner.

As for the UBI thing, it's true and Friedman called it the negative income tax....since once you hit the point that the UBI would exceed taxes spent it is a "negative tax" but it is pretty wasteful and if you want to be populist, it also is basically a few thousand bucks thrown to the rich as well.
Tanner said it, let's not think of it as utopia or the perfect answer but it has to better than the current way.

Originally posted by Padraic Yeah I think I convinced myself it's not.  Someone else here can make the argument if they want to.

haha
And sincerely I'm not saying its impossible, just I struggle to see inflation being a major issue.
With the number of smart people and economists that advocate it in some way (including limited government leaning ones) I am inclined to like the idea



Edited by JJLehto - May 22 2013 at 17:51

Originally posted by HarbouringTheSoul Originally posted by TGM: Orb By the same token, giving that money even to those who don't need it has a lot of advantages in terms of giving people who are currently stuck in the dichotomy between inadequate benefits or sh*t jobs an actual capacity for bargaining with employers on terms beyond life or death and it means when you have a debate about the levels of welfare you can have it based on more universal facts than the niche special cases it always tends to run on at the moment. I'm probably just not getting it, but I don't see the connection between UBI and these two things.

Well:
Benefits dichotomy:
there's an issue you get a mixture of situations where low-paid employment would exclude you from targeted benefits to basically no net gain, which is the often exaggerated welfare trap (some people reckon it's the welfare system at fault, myself I think it's the job pay not being adequate without welfare support). By having a UBI, you don't have any situation where someone by improving their income gets disqualified from benefits they need to supplement that income.

Terms of employment:
Currently we've got an odd mixture in the UK at least of the government essentially making up the slack from supermarkets employing people at less than a living wage. Similarly, benefit providers have both promised jobs for people doing unpaid work (G4S at the Olympics being the most egregious example) and threatened people with withdrawing their benefits if they refuse to work unpaid for a supermarket. Currently some exploitative employers are exploiting the conditionality of benefits to basically bully people into doing things for terrible terms and no real advantage - take away that conditionality, and you offer that thing.

Discussing benefits:
Discussion of benefits here is largely based on scandal stories which are misreported by the Mail, the Times and the Sun and other such scumbags with an agenda of making the poor suffer for their own amusement. They take a fringe case where someone receives a silly amount of housing benefit a year because they live in London and landlords are sharking the rent, or where someone receives a lot of child support because they have a lot of children and we don't want to let them starve. These fringe cases get reported as if they're representative of a culture of benefit fraud, or of overly generous benefits, while the reality of how much people on benefits get is kept extremely nebulous by the range of different sources. It becomes very hard to have an informed discussion just because different people get wildly different benefits depending on a huge number of factors, and because certain sections of the media deliberately and consistently misrepresent them.

I mean, I have some reservations about UBI but I think for what it offers in those few areas at least it may be worth a shot.

Originally posted by Padraic Originally posted by HarbouringTheSoul These people don't need the UBI; they already have a decent income by themselves. So all this UBI money that goes towards them is wasted money that could be better used by either lowering taxes or giving it to the people who actually need it.  But that's essentially what the UBI would do for high earners - lower their total tax burden.

Yes, but it causes more bureaucracy than actually lowering their taxes.

Originally posted by TGM: Orb By the same token, giving that money even to those who don't need it has a lot of advantages in terms of giving people who are currently stuck in the dichotomy between inadequate benefits or sh*t jobs an actual capacity for bargaining with employers on terms beyond life or death and it means when you have a debate about the levels of welfare you can have it based on more universal facts than the niche special cases it always tends to run on at the moment.

I'm probably just not getting it, but I don't see the connection between UBI and these two things.

Originally posted by TGM: Orb As a lefty, I think the UBI's a pretty good idea. In that it takes away the sort of thing our gov't's currently doing, which is gating traditional welfare measures behind a mass of finicky and unreasonable qualifications (my personal favourite being people having their benefits docked for not filling out an online questionnaire on positive thinking which returned completely randomly generated results...), supposedly designed to distinguish people who 'deserve' jobseekers allowance from people who don't. Similarly the bollocks drugs test measures in various parts of the States. Or the weird exploitation of housing benefit by landlords here or the idea of coupons valid for specific things from supermarkets instead of cash benefits, which the conservatives have been floating (which should surely really upset conservatives just on the ground of how incredibly anti-competitive it is). I sort of understand a preference for targeted welfare but I think in many ways that attaches a load of patronising, dehumanising conditions to state handouts and allows gov'ts on the right to use the mechanisms for handouts to completely undermine the benefits framework without any actual lawmaking. Edit: I'm surprised that Hayek is a fan, though. And I think it'd be an interesting way forwards for the right wing to replace a load of governmental stuff with a simpler but still humane measure. Not that I think the money behind the right wing would be especially interested in anything which would give people in jobs which pay bugger all a little more leverage against exploitation.

I don't think the left wing is really interested either. The idea is usually to implement programs that make the poor think that you're helping them while in reality using them to payback business interests and propagate a political agenda.