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A comment on Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult.

Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by sytelus on Sunday October 06, 2013 @12:34AM (#6503136)
Obviously people proposing this aren't thinking it through or have no training in basic economics. Intuitively you can think of money as amount of labor that you owe from other human beings [1]. So let's say in some country you need minimum of $1000 /mo to satisfy your basic needs. What this means is that someone needs to grow your food, weave your cloths, run electricity plants etc and that amount of labor costs $1000 at the moment. Now imagine a government suddenly guarantees $2000 of income to everyone. What happens next? A lot of these people who were supposed to grow food for you, weave your cloths and run electricity plants for you will drop out of labor market. This means human labor gets in less supply and its demand suddenly increases. That means cost of labor suddenly increases. That means very soon $2000 is no longer enough to buy enough labor to satisfy your basic needs. In essence, $3000 would now be new minimum that is required for your basic needs. You are back to the square one with only effect being government essentially inflated the currency.

[1] In this simplification we assume that most raw material required to satisfy basic needs is available in sufficient quantity so the cost of goods is strongly a function of human labor rather than raw material.

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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by chii on Sunday October 06, 2013 @12:41AM (#6503153)
This argument assumes that the efficiency cannot be increased, and stays at X amount of "work" per human.

Imagine if the basic income enabled large amount of people to try out different inventions, or perform research, such that it now takes only 1/2 X to produce food, where as before it was X. One way this could happen is that because labour costs increased, more automation is encouraged/deployed, and thus gain efficiency.

Of course, if the above _doesn't_ happen, then yes, your conclusion is pretty spot on.

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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by dinkumthinkum on Sunday October 06, 2013 @01:15AM (#6503215)
Sure, but we could also imagine a works with perpetual motion and infinite energy. Boy, this would be a great place to be. But I'm not sure what that has to do with reality. I don't want to rain on anyone's dreams ...
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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by sytelus on Sunday October 06, 2013 @12:46AM (#6503166)
This point is also very important to understand for all those people whose primary life goal is to retire before 30s or gain "financial independence" so you never have to work again. When you are working, you are making your portion of human labor available in exchange for other people's labor who are working to get food on your table or build roads for you or design safety for your car and so on. When you get out of contributing any labor to the market you are essentially sucking blood off of all the people are actually working to make your life style possible. So ethically, "retiring before 30" and "gaining financial independence" so you never have to worry about giving back to society while benefiting from everybody else's work is wrong. This I believe is also a reason why some people are uncomfortable disclosing these fantasies publicly.
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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by lucaspiller on Sunday October 06, 2013 @03:08AM (#6503404)
It's an interesting point, but I'm not sure I agree. In order to work people are needed to drive the bus I take to work, make me coffee in Starbucks, make me lunch in McDonald's, clean and maintain the building I work in, etc. If I'm not working I don't need other people's human labour to do that, I can do those things myself. Ok you could argue that those people aren't needed for me to work, it is just the lifestyle I choose, but I think that is the point - most people who seek financial independence don't want to have the same lifestyle they currently have.
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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by jmilloy on Sunday October 06, 2013 @10:30AM (#6504173)
Why should I spread out my labor across 40 years when I could be more efficient and spread it out across only 10? Not all labor is "equal", and the amount of money you receive for it is a* measure for its worth.

*I'm not making a comment on the accuracy of this measure, in the current systems.

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