This is exactly what is happening right now. I'm a software developer for the Dutch government and I pay about €40.000 per year in income tax.

My neighbor has the same lifestyle as me. Same apartment, type of clothing, food and sports. And she even drives a car, I don't. Yet I am gone for work for about 50 hours per week and she lives on the income tax I pay. She doesn't even try to have a job because she is happy with her lifestyle living on welfare, the same lifestyle I have to work 40 hours a week for.

I don't hate her, we have a great relationship but it does create a separation between the two groups.

Your neighbour lives the same lifestyle as you on a mere 1k euro a month?

New housing projects are mandated to have 35% social housing. So our building of 12 apartments have 4 social housing ones with I believe cost €600 per month in rent. Minus around €200 in rent subsidy for people with low income so you pay around €400.

I pay 2 percent interest of €300.000 so about €1000 per month including paying off the mortgage in 30 years and around €150 in building maintenance cost.

Also yearly healthcare for me is €1000 for insurance plus €2900 in Zwv tax. For her it’s €1000 for insurance only and there is a €900 healthcare subsidy for low income.

So that why we have the same lifestyle even though are income is very different. We call it “nivileren”, which I believe translates to income leveling.

Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then? This is what I don't understand about most Europeans. All of my friends in Europe all do exactly what your neighbor is doing, almost all of them just live on welfare and it is great. They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid.

All of them use this time to work on interesting personal projects and do really cool work that I love being a part of. I love that they have time to do that and keep working on what they are passionate about without worrying about money.

If I were European I don't think I would do what you do unless I was working at my own personal company. And if I was working for myself at a high enough profit level that taxation would effect me, I would not incorporate my business in Europe at all.

This is just my perspective as a American, but I think this is why this system wouldn't work at all in America, people like me who are completely competent and able to work like me would probably try to get out of working.

> They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid.

This sounds too good to be true. Do you have any numbers? The welfare systems in EU are shrinking.

Welfare in the Netherlands is ~1200/month. If you live cheaply (e.g. in a 500/month room in a shared house) that leaves more than enough for a transatlantic plane ticket every now and then.

Source (in Dutch): https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2018/12/19/uitke...

I cannot find the number you report on that website. Please elaborate on where you got it from. I'm 100% sure you are leaving out important additional details, like that one has to have been recently employed.

You can get WW (werkeloosheidswet - unemployment law) for 24 months, like you say you need a sufficient history of employment. This is based on 70% of the minimum (full-time) wage, i.e. 70% of 1615.80 = 1131 euros/month.

Minimum wage is on the top of the linked pdf (download link here [1]).

Sorry if I was unclear, just looking for some ballpark numbers for the sake of the argument.

[1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/publicaties/2018/12/...

>Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then?

If everyone does that, then the system can't be sustained.

> Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then?

Eventually, he will, just like everybody else will - which is why socialism fails ever time it's tried. Unfortunately, starting it is bloodless but ending it never is.

I'm beginning to think increasing minimum wage will help. You don't need to tax the rich, just make them pay their people better. But that's still at odds with two thing. 1) it will increase incentive for more automation - but that's already happening as fast as the engineers can do it. 2) it will increase the incentive to use undocumented workers who can be paid under the table below minimum wage. Before we can talk about increasing the minimum wage I think we need to make sure everyone who works is actually getting it.

I don't think minimum wage increases work. There are some unintended consequences. Let's say you pay people $15/hour to flip burgers. They have a higher wage but companies generally pass this cost increase on to consumers. All companies that raised these prices tend to be the ones that the poor people shop at. In the end you don't get the increase in buying power that you might think just by raising wages.

Additionally, what about the EMT that went to school for 2 years and makes $36K ($18/hour)? You have now totally destroyed the value of their education investment and made this job undesirable. Over time, people won't choose this job without wage increases. This may not happen instantly but eventually this ripples higher and higher. As it does so, the wage increase cause higher prices. Eventually at equilibrium it doesn't seem likely to me that anyone's buying power is really improved.

I still think the only solution is to tax the "rich" more and move to almost no taxes for those that are poorer. There is no reason at all to tax someone who is making minimum wage. Given the wage gap, the tax doesn't even need to increase very much to do this.

No, you need to enforce the immigration laws in this case. Increasing the 'incentive' to use illegal immigrants is increasing the incentive to break the law. Typical thinking I suppose. Don't go after the people that break the law, let them break it and create another law to penalize them. This makes no sense to me. And don't say "they're doing it anyway" - that's bullshit. Fine these businesses and arrest the owners for that.

There is no need to tax the rich more even tho this is the penalty du jour. This will do nothing to fix any of this. People need to stop taxing the rich and work to getting rich themselves (taboo here on HN of course).

Your flipping burgers job or grocery bagging job or ditch digging job should not be a career. Because of the fact that those are not careers firstly, and secondly, because they will be automated away. You need to use that as a stepping stone to something better. It is not easy to get rich - it is a long road. But it is one that you should use to better yourself so you can achieve.

There is no incentive with universal income. None with welfare. Sure, let the government provide a minimum safety net, but (as I have learned the hard way) your family and close friends are the ones that should be helping you out. Not the state. Minimum wage is a state imposed artificial penalty pushed on businesses. As a business owner, costs are my enemy and while I offer to provide fair wages for those I employ, having the state impose an artificial cost make business harder. If it continues to get harder, it cannot be maintained.

So, if your goal is to put businesses out of business (who employs you then?), then min wage and tax increases along with cost increases will keep doing that. I'm not talking about mega corps, I'm talking about real businesses. More people need to start their own businesses to see how clear cut all this is. There's a reason companies flee states like California - because the costs to run a business there along with the high taxes make it a difficult place to live. And that's the truth. Just ask anyone who has left..

If an employee can only provide $10 of value to a business per hour, let's say, then employers have no incentive to hire them if the have to pay > $10/h. $8-10/h is better than no pay.

3) it will increase the incentive to send work offshore to poorer countries

Import tariffs - standard solution to that. The folks yelling "free trade" don't acknowledge that we don't actually have free trade in the first place. All these things need to be kept in balance. It's hard, but that's what governing is supposed to be about.

edit. Actually no. Most of the jobs we're talking about are local. Importing stuff from cheaper places is similar to automation.

Free trade would lift hundreds of millions out of poverty.

https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/post...

Those work for goods, but what about services like outsourcing IT and call centers to India?

There are three problems with your statement.

First that you assume that we don't have givers and takers right now.

Second that you imply that takers are the poor.

Third is that you assume there is no resentment at the moment.

Yes. The real issue is that the resentment is between givers and givers. Middle class and working poor are all being screwed over. But the wealthy takers have convinced many of the middle class that their perceived austerity is due to the lazy welfare-takers. And that the "job-givers" (i.e. wealth takers) should be lauded for the part they play.

To be clear I was not saying the characterization of the poor as "takers" is fair, I was just saying that's how they will be labeled by society a large.

> need to find a way ... to give them purpose

The idea that the government should be giving people purpose is the beginning of a dystopian nightmare.

>> WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? <<

The CCC during the Great Depression put millions to work and they built some amazing and lasting infrastructure. As a kid I would go to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah Nat. Park and be amazed and thankful at the work they did. Didn't seem so dystopian to me.

I did not say it had to be the government. We as a society need to define what a life not centered around work really looks like and how it fits in.

>> It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on both sides.

This is oversimplified. There are already takers across both groups, except that the taking is pretty much always looked at more negatively when done by the poor.