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Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by rbanffy on Saturday September 30, 2017 @06:38PM (#15375338)
> The US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services

At the expense of generating poverty either in the form of people working two or three part time jobs (so that "costs" like healthcare can be avoided) to barely make rent or abroad, in factories where one needs to extend nets to prevent suicides.

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by WalterBright on Saturday September 30, 2017 @07:46PM (#15375593)
The US has been the greatest bootstrapper of poor people into middle class and wealth history has ever seen. The US was populated by poor immigrants with little more than a suitcase. Wealthy people didn't immigrate to the US. Look at the statistics on height, longevity, and infant mortality from 1800 to today. It's a little hard to argue that the free market impoverished people.

As for healthcare, that has not been a free market in the US at least since WW2.

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by rbanffy on Saturday September 30, 2017 @11:20PM (#15376181)
Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by TheSpiceIsLife on Sunday October 01, 2017 @03:20AM (#15376788)
The linked PDF talks about how, 50+ years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America."

Yet as of the publication date, 31st December 2006, data indicate that more than 12 percent of U.S. residents still live below the poverty line.

For 2006, a family of four was considered in poverty if its annual income fell below $20,444. For a couple under age 65, the poverty threshold was $13,500, and for an individual living alone, it was $10,488.

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by WalterBright on Saturday September 30, 2017 @07:49PM (#15375604)
For another example, West Germany turned to the free market from about 1948 to 1970, resulting in an incredible rise from the devastation of WW2. East Germany did not see any results remotely similar.

Before you say "The Marshall Plan" most of the MP money was given to France and Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Expenditures

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by nickpp on Saturday September 30, 2017 @07:04PM (#15375439)
Poverty is where we all started from. Free market is the one responsible of the reduction of poverty in most western countries.

To see the result of tightly controlled market, check out Venezuela and the old Easter European communist regimes.

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by TheSpiceIsLife on Sunday October 01, 2017 @03:33AM (#15376815)
In support of this, have you happened across Deirdre McCloskey, and her tomes Bourgeois Dignity and two books that follow.

She does a decent job of thrashing out, at length, why the dignity to participate in the free market by innovating and bringing those innovations to market is the thing that created the modern world. In her own words she gives a "full scale defence of capitalism."

Re:Basic income is just the beginning as Finland looks to ci... by SamReidHughes on Saturday September 30, 2017 @07:42PM (#15375577)
The suicide rate at Foxconn was less than that of the general Chinese public. The people in poverty in America are well-off as measured by consumption rates.

Note that a social safety net is not inconsistent with free markets.