Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[scooter]

They also push for mass immigration, which by simple supply and demand depresses wages due to higher supply of labour.

Immigration also increases the demand for product due to there being more consumers in the population pool, which increases the demand for labor. High population growth through any means has almost always been accompanied by periods of strong economic growth.

[MJW (ya that one)]

They also push for mass immigration, which by simple supply and demand depresses wages due to higher supply of labour.

Immigration also increases the demand for product due to there being more consumers in the population pool, which increases the demand for labor. High population growth through any means has almost always been accompanied by periods of strong economic growth.

As I said earlier immigrants are a net gain but only because they are much younger. In order to keep this true you would have to bring more and more immigrants. This is a Ponzi scheme. We also don't care about GDP; we care about wages if you are trying to persuade people. The inflation in labor pool driving down wages more than cancels out the GDP.

[MJW (ya that one)]

GOP does stuff like this too (even worse) but two wrongs don't make a right.

[TheHumanHydra]

Who must needs convince their voters. Hence, 'any popular reaction against a UBI would be to cancel the UBI, not implement [eugenics].'

You're still misreading the argument, neither will it be construed as a 'popular reaction against the UBI'. It'll just be put as the scientific, enlightened and environmental thing to do with a certain class of people.

Who must convince their voters. If the argument is 'we should not implement UBI because some people will believe in eugenics without the power to implement it,' I'm not sure the reason for your fear.

This line of argument seems so far fetched that I am surprised it is being offered in good faith. Frankly, it seems the kind of muddled thinking deriving from ideological fanaticism.

The left has, in fact, effected industrialized murder on its subjects in multiple places in the world. Everywhere it was done under the ideology of helping people (naturally, few people are actually maniacs, the more catastrophic a thing you want to do, the better your intentions need to be). Saloth Sar was a darling of Europe's intellectuals and came to his peculiar views in Paris whilst pursuing advanced studies (without success) and engaging actively with the local progressive scene.

Also, just this: https://youtu.be/B-Ljkoh_vmE

Of course various communists and fascists have. But we are talking about (presumably) the American Democratic party, or the Canadian NDP, or British Labour. I, for one, will consider every proposed social initiative on the basis of its merits, not on the basis of what hypothetical fanatics might do with it. Otherwise we shall be held captive to counterfactuals forever.

Alternatively, we could discuss the many nightmare scenarios foreseeable from future Republican governments. The environment of the Handmaid's Tale has been cited as one. But I would rather dismiss all such fantasizing and make decisions based on thought, not fear.

(P.S. As for the UBI, I do not want one implemented until necessary. Necessary, to me, means with vast amounts of unemployment generated by automation if it doesn't produce the new lines of work that are often prophesied. As such, it's a 'this century,' not a 'this decade,' initiative.)

[Bacchus]

As for the UBI, I do not want one implemented until necessary.

What if it were shown that administration and policing of conditional benefits, such as unemployment, is.such that getting rid of all that bureaucracy would allow us to pay out the same amounts to all takers?

[TheHumanHydra]

As for the UBI, I do not want one implemented until necessary.

What if it were shown that administration and policing of conditional benefits, such as unemployment, is.such that getting rid of all that bureaucracy would allow us to pay out the same amounts to all takers?

Oh, maybe. In my Canadian context, only if it didn't defund OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Plan) and its equivalents -- the disproportionate allocation of funds there is a feature.

[Gavagai]

I would accept UBI as a reasonable political compromise on the condition of elimination of all other welfare - including free healthcare and education - forever. But I do not think people on the Left would accept that and I do not know how can I trust this arrangement to be permanent. If the mentality which made the compromise necessary remains intact, then all other elements of the welfare state would inevitably creep back in - only we would have UBI on top of them.

[ipecac]

Who must needs convince their voters. Hence, 'any popular reaction against a UBI would be to cancel the UBI, not implement [eugenics].'

You're still misreading the argument, neither will it be construed as a 'popular reaction against the UBI'. It'll just be put as the scientific, enlightened and environmental thing to do with a certain class of people.

Who must convince their voters.

You don't need to convince them to vote for it. They'll just convince people that since the experts support it, it must be right, so just go along with it (like with much of economic policy, which the public doesn't understand).

I, for one, will consider every proposed social initiative on the basis of its merits, not on the basis of what hypothetical fanatics might do with it.

Each social initiative has to be considered in terms of its demerits too, which includes what intellectuals who've gone on and on about 'too much population here on earth' will do with the redundant class it creates.

As has already been pointed out, eugenics was a standard Progressive policy in the US for a while, these people weren't 'fanatics', they were matter of fact about it. And many of their policies were enacted. Not thinking about higher-order effects is the standard feature of liberals when they approach policy, which explains why the policies usually are bad.

[ipecac]

Immigration also increases the demand for product due to there being more consumers in the population pool, which increases the demand for labor.

This is the standard boilerplate nonsense, taken not from Fox News, but from some other outlet. (Well, maybe the neocons at Fox have also said the same thing).

Does that new demand for labour compensate for the mass influx of supply? That is not demonstrated and false, it doesn't happen. The demand of a single person does not create enough demand for one new job, especially with economies of scale.

High population growth through any means has almost always been accompanied by periods of strong economic growth.

I've addressed this previously. In short, in the context of simple inequality economists will point out that increased wealth doesn't necessarily trickle down, but then insist it does with free trade or mass immigration. As MJW said, it doesn't matter if aggregate GDP of the country increases if working class wages are permanently hit.

[Huinesoron]

I would accept UBI as a reasonable political compromise on the condition of elimination of all other welfare - including free healthcare and education - forever. But I do not think people on the Left would accept that and I do not know how can I trust this arrangement to be permanent. If the mentality which made the compromise necessary remains intact, then all other elements of the welfare state would inevitably creep back in - only we would have UBI on top of them.

Okay, let's work through this. A universal basic income to provide access to life's basic needs would have to cover, per Wikipedia, the following 8 items:

-Food, sufficient to maintain a decent nutritional balance. As a ballpark figure, this article says £10 a week is perfectly doable; we'll use that. Call it £40/month.

-Safe drinking water. The average annual water+sewage bill in the UK is around £400/year. That comes out as £33/month.

-Sanitation facilities. The sewage bill is included in the above, so we don't need to consider this separately.

-Health. This article suggests annual healthcare costs of US$10,000 without subsidies; that's around £650/month. Of course, that's not going to be anything like spread out evenly - young, healthy people may well spend nothing, while the elderly are going to be pushing hundreds of thousands each year. The assumption behind 'no-welfare UBI' would be that people with hundreds of thousands in the bank are still going to continue to eat only £10/week, which is pretty ludicrous actually. But we'll go with it. Maybe there's a government-run trust fund which you can only take money out of if you can show it's for medical reasons.

-Shelter. The big one, historically speaking. This article gives rental prices for 2015 across the UK; we'll ignore the London value as skewed by the type of properties on offer, but we have to remember that people do still live in Greater London (because that's where the work is). I'll take the value for the South West here, which is £872/month. Assuming an average residency of two, we'll call that £450/month per person.

Perhaps we should look at purchasing, instead? The average price of a flat (apartment) in the UK is around £225,000; over a lifetime, that's only £250/month! ... but to pay for that, you'd have to give it as a bulk sum, a sort of 'housing benefit', so that's off the table. Stick with the £450. Then throw in energy costs (average £784/year for a small house or flat) and Council Tax (~£1500/year), to come to a total £640/month.

-Education. Assume education from age 5 to 20, so allowing for a two-year higher education qualification. That can be an apprenticeship or something. So... how much does that cost? This article estimates £1300/year to put a child through school currently. Spread that out over their lifespan (maybe the fact that they have none of their 'education' money is balanced out by them having unused 'health' money? Hope you don't have sickly kids!), and you get a perfectly reasonable figure of £25/month.

Then you want to get rid of the free education system, so I guess we need to divide the entire tax burden of Education across the population? Hmm... in 2010, the UK spent £88 billion on education. Splitting that over 65 million people, we, interestingly enough, hit another £1300/year per person. So we can simply double our initial figure and call it £50/month.

-Information. Wikipedia says 'Everyone must have access to newspapers, radios, televisions, computers, or telephones at home'. I suppose we could just budget for a weekly paper, but more reasonably, to allow for, eg, looking for work, we're going to need a phone. Poking through the figures, we're looking at £20/month line rental, plus the cost of calls and any plan - say, double it, then add a bit for the initial connection charge? £50/month, then, plus £10/month for the papers.

If you want to be absurdly generous and allow your unemployed people internet access, you're looking at at least an extra £10/month for that, plus a new computer every five years because of planned obsolescence... call it £1000, £20/month, so total £90/month across all of 'Information'.

-Access to services. If you need to go to the bank, or the hospital, or to school, you need transport. Assuming you have decent public transport links, we could call that £5 a day, or £150/month. If you haven't... well, for £2000 you can get a car that will last you ten years. Add in £140/year for road tax, £50/year for the required MOT, about £500/year for repairs (hopefully your car doesn't break too much!), and of course fuel. I get through £40 of fuel in a bit under two weeks, almost all in going to work or the shop. We'll use that.

Adding this all together, we get a car cost of £154/month... a perfect match for public transport! So we don't even have to choose!

So, assuming that poor people aren't allowed to go on holidays, or even to the pub, our total welfare-free UBI comes to £1653/month, or ~£20,000. That comes to quite a bit more than what you'd get from working a minimum wage 9-5 job. Presumably, since we've gotten rid of healthcare and education, we'll also be raising minimum wage? Or are we paying the UBI in addition to wages, and removing minimum wage all together?

The cost of paying this UBI to every UK resident would be £1.3 trillion. The current total UK government budget is estimated at £814 billion (source). Even if my estimate is twice what it should be, it would still come to more than the ~£500 billion cost of benefits+education+health.

Still happy to go for that? 

hS