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Basic income in ireland

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,004 ✭✭✭Recondite49


    Iwasfrozen wrote: »
    So automatically give everyone 15k a year even if they've never worked a day in their life? Yeah, I'm going to have to go with a no on this one.

    My concern is that it would drive up prices in tandem.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 431 ✭✭whats newxt


    Oh well the swiss are putting in to a vote at the end of the year so if it gets passed well finally have a real world example to look at.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,004 ✭✭✭Recondite49


    Oh well the swiss are putting in to a vote at the end of the year so if it gets passed well finally have a real world example to look at.

    Really? I'd be fascinated to see. Apparently all the experiments to date haven't really worked out as the participants knew they wouldn't be receiving the payment for life.


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    Oh well the swiss are putting in to a vote at the end of the year so if it gets passed well finally have a real world example to look at.
    It's fine for Switzerland but we simply can't afford to give everyone €33,000 a year.

    Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-16/inequality-fight-swiss-will-vote-on-minimum-income

    I do love this quote though:

    “If unemployment goes up, that’s a great thing,” says Daniel Straub, the coordinator of the referendum effort and author of The Liberation of Switzerland. “Because we should see unemployment as freeing people up to pursue what creates meaning for them.” Adds Enno Schmidt, a painter and documentary film producer who’s campaigned for the idea since 2006: “It’s not societally very efficient if people are forced to do something that they don’t really want to do.”

    Ok Daniel so if unemployment goes up how are you going to afford these payments?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 282 ✭✭KahBoom


    KyussBishop here - a Basic Income is a hedge against economic crisis and unemployment, because it keeps demand up when the economy is in a downturn, leading to a faster recovery from unemployment.

    It's not really an issue of what we can 'afford', it's only an issue of how we choose to distribute resources.

    The only affordability issue, is the way the Euro and EU is run - and that's unsustainable at the moment, and will change in the future.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    KahBoom wrote: »
    KyussBishop here - a Basic Income is a hedge against economic crisis and unemployment, because it keeps demand up when the economy is in a downturn, leading to a faster recovery from unemployment.

    It's not really an issue of what we can 'afford', it's only an issue of how we choose to distribute resources.

    The only affordability issue, is the way the Euro and EU is run - and that's unsustainable at the moment, and will change in the future.
    If people aren't working we won't have the ability to produce wealth.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 282 ✭✭KahBoom


    Iwasfrozen wrote: »
    If people aren't working we won't have the ability to produce wealth.
    Greater domestic demand (which the basic income keeps propped up) = faster profits/recovery-from-crisis for the private sector = greater employment/wealth.


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    KahBoom wrote: »
    Greater domestic demand (which the basic income keeps propped up) = faster profits/recovery-from-crisis for the private sector = greater employment/wealth.

    Domestic demand will rise in Switzerland as well as wages since Swiss will need greater incentives to work.

    The excess produce to meet demand will be imported cheaper from abroad to circumvent high Swiss wages.

    The result will be Switzerland becoming a country of imports while its domestic production base recedes.

    I find the idea of a giving that much money to a person without any guarantee they will work morally objectionable thought it seems like the referendum won't pass in Switzerland anyway.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 282 ✭✭KahBoom


    Iwasfrozen wrote: »
    Domestic demand will rise in Switzerland as well as wages since Swiss will need greater incentives to work.

    The excess produce to meet demand will be imported cheaper from abroad to circumvent high Swiss wages.

    The result will be Switzerland becoming a country of imports while its domestic production base recedes.

    I find the idea of a giving that much money to a person without any guarantee they will work morally objectionable thought it seems like the referendum won't pass in Switzerland anyway.
    Well, if the basis of your argument, is to try and make definitive claims about the psychology of an entire country (that they will be disincentivized from working, to such an extent that their trade balance takes a massive U-turn), there's not really a good way to debate that, as it's purely speculative.


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    KahBoom wrote: »
    Well, if the basis of your argument, is to try and make definitive claims about the psychology of an entire country (that they will be disincentivized from working, to such an extent that their trade balance takes a massive U-turn), there's not really a good way to debate that, as it's purely speculative.
    It's not speculative to say higher domestic wages and higher internal demand will lead to greater reliance on imports.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,580 ✭✭✭Voltex


    The problem with introducing a minimum guaranteed income is that you reduce the incentive for the individual to work for the value of the guaranteed income.

    Milton Friedman's concept of a Negative Income Tax allows for an equitable treatment of the less well off whilst preserving the incentive to work.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,250 ✭✭✭✭Iwasfrozen


    Voltex wrote: »
    The problem with introducing a minimum guaranteed income is that you reduce the incentive for the individual to work for the value of the guaranteed income.

    Milton Friedman's concept of a Negative Income Tax allows for an equitable treatment of the less well off whilst preserving the incentive to work.
    If I remember right Friedman's idea was discussed briefly in the 60s but policy makers found it to be unworkable. Any idea why?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,580 ✭✭✭Voltex


    Iwasfrozen wrote: »
    If I remember right Friedman's idea was discussed briefly in the 60s but policy makers found it to be unworkable. Any idea why?
    There is a curious paradox that is implied within F.A Hayek's writings that emerges when people explore notions suggested by the likes of Friedman. The powers that be rely on the advice of expert opinion on a given subject...yet "experts" generally only become experts due to their elevated or superior knowledge and understanding of the subject. But those who become experts are usually advocates or have a particular interest in the institutions or subject areas being explored. How can those experts really be critically evaluating a potential change whilst rendering an intrinsic bias towards a previous status that stimulated the original interest. Maybe a "fatal conceit" in different clothing!?!


  • Registered Users Posts: 411 ✭✭Hasschu


    Presently there is a huge bureaucracy to determine who is eligible to receive welfare. Then there is the policing of the welfare recipients. Social workers searching the wardrobes and clothes baskets of single mothers for evidence of a "man". If evidence is found, usually in the form of a pair of shoes, a shirt, trousers the single mother is "cut off". That is why there are so many single mothers hustling in inner Dublin.

    So we can pay them with an enormous and intrusive overhead or we can pay them with very little overhead.

    Personally I would opt for paying them without the enormously expensive and soul destroying system presently in existence. Trotting off to the TD with their tales of woe, the TD intervening successfully, another voter for life.

    The people at the bottom will be paid, they will not be dieing of cold and starvation with their bodies being thrown in the city dump or the sea.


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