Interesting Links for 09-04-2014

[andrewducker]

• How Young Women Are Getting Getting Fucked By The Education System
  (tags: USA sexwork education fees )
• Oooh, an article in a national newspaper about citizen's income!
  (tags: GuaranteedIncome uk )
• Four paralysed men move their legs again after electric spinal cord stimulation
  (tags: health technology )
• Silk could soon be used in medical implants

Comments

Citizen's income

[woodpijn]

I have no ideological objections to it - I think it's fine and would be a mark of an advanced society if people didn't have to work unless they wanted to, and people could be free to pursue rewarding but financially unprofitable activities.

But I can't see how it works practically, and reading the intro leaflet from the CI Trust doesn't help. They show how the total bill would be comparable to the current bill for benefits + admin; but only a minority currently get benefits, so if there's the same amount of money now being divided among everyone, those currently claiming benefits will get a fraction of what they currently get (which is itself argued to be insufficient). The Guardian article says "It's not a high figure - barely enough to survive on alone, and below the minimum wage" - but the people campaigning for CI seem to be the same people saying the minimum wage is inadequate to live on, hence Living Wage; so CI < minimum wage < Living Wage, but CI is still (admittedly "barely") enough to live on.
If CI is livable on, Living Wage and even minimum wage would be unnecessary; but if it's not, or even if it's barely adequate, current benefit claimants and their allies will want more, and there will be pressure to implement additional benefits for various categories of people until we end up with something as complex and expensive as the current system, just on top of CI.

Re: Citizen's income

[andrewducker]

The way I would do it (and there are many approaches) is to give everyone 1/3 of median income (about £7k), and then charge 40% tax on _all_ earnings.

This means that it's in everyone's interest to have a job - because they get 60% of what they earn, and you never get trapped in a situation where working means you have less. And it works out that you end up with the same income somewhere around £30k - people under that have more, and people over that have less.

Some numbers here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2996833.html?thread=27481697#t27481697

Re: Citizen's income

[woodpijn]

That's fine for people who currently earn a low income and are in the benefits trap (or people who could work but don't because they would be in that situation if they did), but I'm talking about people who currently earn nothing at all: pensioners, and people who are unemployable for whatever reason, and people who could and would work but there aren't enough jobs. Are you happy with them only ever having £7k?

Re: Citizen's income

[andrewducker]

The basic state pension is £113/week, significantly less than that.

What I'm proposing _to start with_ is that we replace the current level of starting benefits with a simpler system - a basic income.

In the long run, I will happily set our robot slaves to creating all sorts of wonders so that nobody has to work and we can all live in luxury.

A starting point of a Basic Income that pays about as well as the current benefits, but is doesn't have the poverty trap, and can't be removed from people, so that there's not the constant stress of dealing with bureaucrats, is something that would make me happy in the mean time.