Welfare-State People Sound Off

[RubySlippers]

My prefered role of government is to take care of everyone meeting their needs this means universally there should be a right to:

1. Housing Based on Need (number of people in the household including chiildren not adults)

2. Adequete Food (cafeteria style, food card or other means to buy food)

3. Education (libraries, k-12 plus post secondary education that is at least affordable)

4. Clothes

5. Health Care

6. Access to Other Essentials to Live at a Basic Level

This paid for by a flat tax on income of 50% since housing, utilities and other things are provided for money would be then for luxuries and things people want. Corporations also need to be taxed but I would set it based on jobs they create and run in the nation and have a "quality of life" tariff for goods imported from nations below a basic standard of living to make importing expensive but in line with UN conventions we are signees on and the declaration of human rights. We can't be faulted for insisting goods imported be from nations properly commited to the welfare of their citizens like in the new enlightened US.

If people are Libtertarians this will free people and give them untold amounts of liberty the freedom to be free from need and focus on what each wants. You want to go to college it would be possible and you could pay off the debt easier with a clear you get half your income to keep, the rest of your needs are met so take 30% of your income to pay off or pay for tuition if you want. Or set-up learning communes and not have tuition. Or go and work as a food server for sixteen hours a week and half the money is yours use your free time as you wish. Or your this odd person with no ambition, care to do odd jobs fir pocket money we will take half of that and go enjoy your life.

Naturally I would refocus the entire government for a security role, an adequete defense from invasion and modest resources elsewhere more money for mass transit and education and less on things not really needed. We could eliminate social security, the VA, medicare and medicaid rolling all this into the assured basic standard of living.

As I see it people would then work to buy things they want or to get extras but not have to work at a job if they opt not to they just will get by very basically a shared dorm with a his and hers communal bathroom area like college at the basic end. And if rich people want to own a 100 bedroom house it will be fine just pay half of all your income a year to the system and the utility costs etc. since its not government supported it should be expensive and a extreme luxury.

And people would freed form unneceesary work adding more jobs since most mundane jobs could be done part-time and freeing people to focus on things they find more important if they choose to. Its likely most will work more than that to get more things over less and the odd workaholic could still be one since things in a residence would be what people bought in the main.

I know its a long shot in hell this would even happen but for me it would be the perfect system and assure more employment since most companies would have to hire more people if fewer opt out of working long schedules.

[Xajow]

If people are Libtertarians this will free people

No, it won't. It will make everyone slaves.

[Star Safyre]

And people would freed form unneceesary work adding more jobs since most mundane jobs could be done part-time and freeing people to focus on things they find more important if they choose to. Its likely most will work more than that to get more things over less and the odd workaholic could still be one since things in a residence would be what people bought in the main.

I'm as Socialist as a liberal, government employee can be expected to, and I don't believe in the wildest of my Pinko hearts this could work if only based on this single glitch:  What about those whose single desire is to do absolutely nothing?  So if one does not wish to work, become educated, or otherwise contribute to production, one contributes nothing and gains everything under your suggested system.

I know its a long shot in hell this would even happen but for me it would be the perfect system and assure more employment since most companies would have to hire more people if fewer opt out of working long schedules.

There's as many possible economic systems as their are individuals.  As you've conceded that this system is unlikely and would be perfect for you, I'm curious as to why you've chosen to share it.

[Noelle]

There's a big, glaring flaw in your work plan. Who actually wants to be a sanitation worker? Who wants to scoop elephant crap or bathe old people or artificially inseminate cattle? There would be a massive shortage of people to fill crap jobs because they're too busy painting watercolors with their feet or pursuing their dream of pumping out as many children as possible to form their own family baseball team or whatever it is people do.

Why should people who actively choose not to work be entitled to a share of my income when I do have a job? How exactly would this system be sustainable if nobody's obligated to contribute back? What incentive is there to work and provide needed services? I am all for having an ample safety net to provide modest means for those who are struggling, but this goes beyond safety net and starts bordering on rewarding people for essentially doing nothing and making people who actually pull their weight support them in that.

This is...not really freedom at all. This is kind of obviously biased against people with higher incomes and makes it difficult for those who want higher incomes to move up -- what about their freedom? Do they not matter? What incentive do they have to keep working? What incentive do they have to even keep living in the US and perpetuating a system that rewards laziness when they can just pack up and take their money elsewhere?

Pure capitalism is dangerous -- but so is pure socialism.

[Jude]

Adding onto Noelle's point, only two types of people would work in this system:

1)  Those who want more than the basic government provided welfare state gives.

2)  Those who are ambitious in life and cannot stand not to work.

The latter type of person is fairly rare, especially after 40, and typically these people are only driven as long as they can work in a field that is fulfilling in other ways (creatively, emotionally, or intellectually).  So that leaves us with a whole lot of jobs that aren't fulfilling and people who want more than the baseline to do these jobs.

Not only would the system suffer from inflation of the price of labor at entry level positions, but each and every person who chooses not to work at all would be living off of the backs of those who do work.  There are probably enough resources to provide everyone in the country with a reasonable standard of living if we all worked, but each person who chooses not to work takes away from the collective welfare and limits the government's ability to do even that.  What you end up with is a system that is punitive towards higher income workers and doesn't help the little man much because the government can't provide for them anyway unless they collectively work (because money alone doesn't drive the economy, you need the laborers producing the goods for them to be provided to begin with).

There would either be an economic implosion (highly likely) because the state won't be able to keep up with its promises or wages would flatten across the board and people would gravitate towards easy, unskilled labor.  In the end things would be worse off than they are now for majority of people.

Two types of people would benefit from this (and these are distinct groups, I am not conflating the two):  the lazy and the downtrodden (those who are handicapped, disadvantaged, or otherwise find themselves in unfortunate circumstances).  Given how few of Americans are actually in the latter group, you'd do more harm than good.  Eventually, if we become technological enough, this system probably will be viable.  But we'll need to automate the means of production with such efficiency and cost-effectiveness that human labor will not be an issue in providing.

I mean no offense when I say this, but your system seems to reflect a lack of basic knowledge of the fundamental problem that economics exists to solve:  scarcity.

[Vekseid]

I mean no offense when I say this, but your system seems to reflect a lack of basic knowledge of the fundamental problem that economics exists to solve:  scarcity.

Scarcity of what, exactly?

There are more homes in this country than there are families. So it can't be scarcity of housing. The main problem here is determining and encouraging ownership, and good management of said ownership. That's not an easy problem to solve, but Ruby's flaw in this part is not actually about scarcity.

America is in one of the few enviable positions of actually producing -too much- food, and a well-designed rationing system + pay for more could be a powerful way to combat obesity.. So it can't be scarcity of food. Just require that it's grown and produced in America.

The same for clothing - it's not like we'd be paying for designer clothing. Again, just require that it's produced in America.

Our non-public health care system is actually an economic and medical drain, so it can't be for scarcity of health care.

We already have a public education system. Extending it to two years of post-secondary school (which seems to be optimal) would not exactly cripple. Especially if we got more open sourced texts and funded those, instead of paying the thieves currently printing educational materials.

So let's see, other essentials.

Water is actually technically rationed anyway, but making that more formal wouldn't change anything.

- Internet connection and cell phone. Rather than have a tax for this, seize the profits from the obvious price fixing schemes going on and use the funds to make sure that every American can have a phone number and an e-mail address if they wish one.



Save for housing, education and health care, everything on Ruby's list amounts to about $2k per person per year, and that's being far too generous. Assuming health care costs of about $4k per person per year (roughly what insurance companies in the US pay). Fifteen years of education (K-12+2) is about $300k (varies), assuming 50 years of labor after that, an average of another $5k per person.

These are all roughly high estimates. Also, guaranteeing liquidity for basic needs will itself improve the economy.

Everything Ruby wants to do, save housing, could be paid for with a 10% tax. This is because we already pay for most of it (one way or another, i.e. for healthcare), already, but still.

I do think making sure people have an address is important, because it's often a precondition for employment. That sort of situation is a horrific catch-22 and needs to be addressed. Even if it means giving people coffin cells to sleep and use the Internet in, with communal showers and whatnot available, along with a requisite that if you use it, you either pay for it or accept the sorts of jobs people don't want.

[Star Safyre]

Scarcity of what, exactly?

Scarcity in economic terms doesn't mean the same thing as we usually use the term.  Economically, scarcity is the concept that human desire to consume goods and services are limitless but tangible goods can only exist in limited amounts.  There may be a surplus in certain goods right now, which only means that there are more goods than customers can afford or are willing to purchase.

Given that, this statement:

1)  Those who want more than the basic government provided welfare state gives.

is entirely true and value statement. 

[Vekseid]

Scarcity in economic terms doesn't mean the same thing as we usually use the term.  Economically, scarcity is the concept that human desire to consume goods and services are limitless but tangible goods can only exist in limited amounts.  There may be a surplus in certain goods right now, which only means that there are more goods than customers can afford or are willing to purchase.

You send me to Wikipedia, and even Wikipedia points out that yes, some goods can, in fact, be relatively abundant. I am not ignorant of basic economic terms or concepts, if you've paid any attention to my posts in this forum at all.

I did not ask what scarcity was, I asked what was, in fact, genuinely scarce enough to physically prevent Ruby's dream from coming to fruition. It's especially relevant, considering that we do most of it anyway, save for housing. And even then, there are enough homes in the United States to house each and every family. With enough left over to give some families two homes. This is to say nothing of apartment buildings, condos, etc.

There is enough food grown in the country to feed each and every family, with enough left over to feed a significant chunk of the planet. Removing the stigma of food stamps and just give everyone a $100/month voucher for US-provided food would not exactly break anything. $400 billion per year -> but it gets directly channeled into the agricultural economy. Not a bad deal at all. Even better, this could be used to encourage shopping at local markets.

We already provide health care to the majority of the population, with the US government being the largest insurer, and other nations prove that doing it universally is actually cheaper. You cut out the obscene profits of health insurers, the costs due to medicare underpayment (generally because of the excessive amounts of tests run), the costs due to lack of preventative care (something like fifty billion for diabetes alone), this isn't a bad deal either.

Clothing - same deal. Give a $300/year credit for American-made clothing. This also gets channeled directly into the economy, the money doesn't just vanish as with wartime funding.

We already provide compulsory education to the majority of the population. Most of this is absorbed in property taxes, but this makes the quality of education wildly varying.

There's really, very little wrong with Ruby's suggestion, outside of housing - and even then the problem is not exactly the scarcity of housing itself. Most of the rest is either already implemented, or is in fact implemented for the poorest classes of the population (hell, even housing is). It's just not implemented well, and the hoops you have to go through are atrocious.

Given that, it's important to recognize what Ruby's suggestion - for the pittance of its real cost provides. Security and stability.

Given that, this statement:

is entirely true and value statement.

That is basically how socialist societies function. Some of these happen to have the highest standard of living in the world. I'm not really sure what you are getting at.

By all means, make sure that the 'free' benefits people get are just meager enough that they can be secure but not enough to satisfy.

Housing is a bit of a thorny issue. You want to encourage ownership, because otherwise people tend to take piss-poor care of said property. But it should be possible to make sure that people can get showers, have an address where they can pick up mail, have a cell phone so they have a phone number, have Internet access, a safe place to sleep, etc. even without 'housing' in the traditional sense.

[Noelle]

Nobody is claiming it's scarce now. But who is going to work the jobs to provide those things if the incentives to work are practically nonexistent? 16 hours of labor a week by someone who just kind of wants to be working the job isn't enough to meet demand for even the basics. Who wants to work in a factory when they could be chasing their dream of playing the banjo? Who's going to educate the next generation if work is optional and the tax on those who do work is 50%? And even if they do teach, how is 16 hours a week sufficient to accomplish anything in any career?

[Jude]

We'll need more workers than ever in all sorts of basic service industries if we provided those things.  Plumbers to maintain the piping in these houses, government bureaucrats to oversea the dispersing of all of these amenities, doctors and nurses to help with the new patient load, people to do hard manual labor on the farms, truck drivers to transport all of the newly consumed goods (not to mention gas to fuel the transit), factory workers to make the clothing and medicine, so on and so forth.  Upping the need for basic labor force while at the same time reducing the incentives for working (by making it not necessary for basic survival) is a recipe for famine in the long-term.

In order for it to work we'd have to be able to raise the standard of living of the majority of the country.  It wouldn't matter if you were working poor, a welfare queen, or struggling middle class, society would have to give you more than you already have in order for this system to be at all sustainable.  There may be money for this on paper, but I highly doubt we have the labor for it.

You may think, "That CEO makes 3 million a year.  If he gave 2 million of it to charity in a month we'd be able to provide for 50 families."  It seems to work out, 2 million divided by 50 is about 40,000.  However, this assumes that simply because the money would then be available the goods and services would be as well.  In reality, if we started a grand program like this the skyrocketing demand for all of these goods and services would increase their value exponentially.  Going by today's standard we can probably afford this, but the question is for how long and after the shift in the economy we would cause, would it really be a viable program?

Now, I'm not skeptical about our ability to provide all of these things.  The whole food thing isn't terribly shocking, as you've said we basically already provide that.  Housing is another story however because you can't just provide someone with a framework of wood, electrical wiring, bricks, and carpeting and viola.  Houses require a ridiculous amount of resources to maintain, especially if we're trying to keep the property intact and the people in them above the poverty line.

And the more you pile on in terms of rights the more expensive it gets.  Internet?  I guess everyone needs a computer.  Then they need electricity for it, the physical infrastructure, we'll have to beef up our national network to compensate for the additional traffic, provide education on how to use it for the computer illiterate, and tech support for the vast majority of people.  Cell phones are a whole other nightmare.

I think it's fairly non-controversial to say that if we give people too much for doing nothing not enough people will work in order to sustain the burden.  I will admit that how much is too much is a question that is horrifically complicated and would require such nuanced knowledge in order to draw the exact line.  I am not qualified to make this determination.  I do however think that if you provide people everything that they need to survive you're giving too them too much.  I simply can't wrap my head around why people in dead-end careers would continue to work at all in this system.

Why not work, save up a bit of cash for leisure, then return early and then live under mommy & daddy government's roof until the day you die?  If you like to read, just live in your government provided house, eat your government provided food, and go to the library to check out government provided books.  Or better yet:  spend all day on the internet doing nothing while those who are stupid enough to work foot the bill for literally everything you do.

After all, who needs a job when you've got flash games, porn, and wikipedia.

EDIT:  And none of this speaks to the incompetence of organization bureaucracy.  I just don't have faith in a government that can't even manage to solve problems in a capitalist framework for the fortunate (ignoring the lower 10% of the population's struggles) to do the same for damn near everyone.

Reminds me of something my dad once said:  every time I go to the DMV I'm reminded of why socialism will never work.

[Serephino]

Socialism can be good, to a point.  I am very much against providing for people who are just plain lazy, but there are many people out there who aren't lazy, they just have the odds stacked against them.  If you become homeless for some reason, the chances of you getting a job drop dramatically because you don't have an address or a phone number.  That isn't fair to those who do want to work.  In that case, providing, say, temporary housing for those actively looking for a job would be a benefit.

I'm also in support of government run healthcare.  In this modern age, this should be a right.  And I think this would benefit the nation because aren't healthy people generally more productive?  Hell, if I would have had access to proper care a long time ago, I might have been able to work. 

[Vekseid]

Nobody is claiming it's scarce now. But who is going to work the jobs to provide those things if the incentives to work are practically nonexistent? 16 hours of labor a week by someone who just kind of wants to be working the job isn't enough to meet demand for even the basics. Who wants to work in a factory when they could be chasing their dream of playing the banjo? Who's going to educate the next generation if work is optional and the tax on those who do work is 50%? And even if they do teach, how is 16 hours a week sufficient to accomplish anything in any career?

I already mentioned that the tax for everything Ruby wants, save housing, is 10%. Not 50%.

The mean wage is $100k per year, roughly. The sum total of all of the benefits Ruby is requesting, save housing, is $10k per year, roughly. There are genuine issues regarding ownership and responsibility when it comes to housing - but the rest of it is a pittance.

Keep in mind, we already provide everything in Ruby's list to the nation's poorest. Everything. Free cell phones. Free health care. Extremely cheap housing (for as little as $5 a month). Free clothes. Free food. Free books. Free Internet access.

There is no vehicle in Ruby's list. You want a car? You want fuel for it? You need to work for it. We could probably provide a free bicycle though.

There is no dining out in Ruby's list. No entertainment budget. No social budget. I find the claim that people in general would be content to sit and rot to be rather specious.

The only reason for hiking taxes to 50% would be to pay down the debt, really. And when that's done they can go back to 30% or so (defense + social security + other general government functions).

We'll need more workers than ever in all sorts of basic service industries if we provided those things.  Plumbers to maintain the piping in these houses,

No we wouldn't, the houses already exist.

government bureaucrats to oversea the dispersing of all of these amenities,

Why? Just attach the clothing and food vouchers to your state ID. The free cell phone program already exists.

doctors and nurses to help with the new patient load,

We need more general practitioners and fewer specialists. This is a function of the way our health care system is currently broken, not an actual shortage of medical specialization.

people to do hard manual labor on the farms,

Hardly, this would just replace food stamps, and gut some of the bureaucracy.

truck drivers to transport all of the newly consumed goods (not to mention gas to fuel the transit),

Like what, twenty? A hundred? Again, for the millionth time, these programs already exist for the poor.

factory workers to make the clothing

Yeah, more work for Americans, that's -such- a problem.

and medicine,

Somehow I don't think a 25% increase in demand is going to break the Pharma industry.

so on and so forth.  Upping the need for basic labor force while at the same time reducing the incentives for working (by making it not necessary for basic survival) is a recipe for famine in the long-term.

Name one famine the United States has undergone since the introduction of food stamps in 1939.

Name one nation whose universal health care system has collapsed it.

Name one nation whose universal education system has collapsed it.

Do homeless shelters encourage homelessness?

The rest of the goods are trivial in comparison - the idea is to make sure people have phone numbers, an address, and an e-mail address, because employment often requires these things.

In order for it to work we'd have to be able to raise the standard of living of the majority of the country.  It wouldn't matter if you were working poor, a welfare queen, or struggling middle class, society would have to give you more than you already have in order for this system to be at all sustainable.  There may be money for this on paper, but I highly doubt we have the labor for it.

There is money for it in reality, because, you know, we already do it.

I've mentioned this before, but part of the problem with many forms assistance for the poor is that they do in fact work, and actually make too much in order to get the benefits. Ruby's solution gives no additional benefit to those who actually refuse to work most of the time - they already get it all. It's the people who make more than $10k a year (roughly) who get screwed. You can't live on that - but you don't get the free health care, cheap housing, etc.

You may think, "That CEO makes 3 million a year.  If he gave 2 million of it to charity in a month we'd be able to provide for 50 families."  It seems to work out, 2 million divided by 50 is about 40,000.  However, this assumes that simply because the money would then be available the goods and services would be as well.  In reality, if we started a grand program like this the skyrocketing demand for all of these goods and services would increase their value exponentially.  Going by today's standard we can probably afford this, but the question is for how long and after the shift in the economy we would cause, would it really be a viable program?

Your argument only holds for goods that don't already have a comparable amount of demand already. Cell phones, clothing, and food may increase slightly in demand, but for the most part, it won't increase too much, because nearly the entire population already has these things.

Similarly, sometimes providing a good universally can actually reduce the overall cost. When I went to ER for my hernia, I took up the time of a lot of good doctors, whereas a general checkup would have sufficed if I had gotten it checked earlier, and taken up the time of all of one doctor. For a more graphic example, one member here spend five days in an ICU because she could not afford $100 for antibiotics for an infection. Another member here has spent three years in chemotherapy, for want of surgery when the first symptoms of cancer appeared.

We -all- pay for that.

This is to say nothing of the cost of rescission workers and the medical staff time they take up, the cost of bankruptcies - not just for the people going through them but the hospitals stuck with the costs. The cost of frivolous testing - not just in terms of the expense in medicare but, you know, the woman in my signature would be alive today if her overworked doctors didn't miss it.

Now, I'm not skeptical about our ability to provide all of these things.  The whole food thing isn't terribly shocking, as you've said we basically already provide that.  Housing is another story however because you can't just provide someone with a framework of wood, electrical wiring, bricks, and carpeting and viola.  Houses require a ridiculous amount of resources to maintain, especially if we're trying to keep the property intact and the people in them above the poverty line.

This is actually an argument for providing more housing - seizing unused, run-down homes, and auctioning them off to the impoverished and giving them a voucher to help fix it up. House prices aren't just falling because of the economy. We have two million homeless... and nineteen million empty, unused homes. These aren't homes being rented out or used as vacation homes. They, simply, aren't used.

The issue is you want to make sure the people acquiring a home have a sense of ownership of and responsibility for it. That's non-trivial.

And the more you pile on in terms of rights the more expensive it gets.  Internet?  I guess everyone needs a computer.  Then they need electricity for it, the physical infrastructure, we'll have to beef up our national network to compensate for the additional traffic, provide education on how to use it for the computer illiterate, and tech support for the vast majority of people.  Cell phones are a whole other nightmare.

Let's see, a typical nettop cheap laptop draws about 40 watts. Not even a kilowatt hour per day if somehow used 24/7.

Compare that to say, heating assistance.

And don't get me started about 'upgrading the national network'. There's a reason why I said we could pull the funds by legally seizing them due to antitrust violations. It is not that expensive.

And we already are providing free cell phones.

I think it's fairly non-controversial to say that if we give people too much for doing nothing not enough people will work in order to sustain the burden.  I will admit that how much is too much is a question that is horrifically complicated and would require such nuanced knowledge in order to draw the exact line.

It's pretty clear that providing enough food to eat fairly well is not too much.

It's pretty clear that providing a cell phone with limited minutes is not too much.

It's pretty clear that providing housing assistance is not too much. This includes utility assistance programs.

It's pretty clear that providing clothing assistance is not too much.

It's pretty clear that providing education is not too much.

It's pretty clear that providing universal health care is not too much.

The only thing that remains, from Ruby's argument, is actually providing the housing directly and not just assistance (because $5 per month is apparently too much for some people, and they will bitch and holler about paying even that, according to one friend who's worked in low income housing).

There probably is a point where you have to identify and prune outright leaches, and maybe something like that will suffice.

I am not qualified to make this determination.  I do however think that if you provide people everything that they need to survive you're giving too them too much.  I simply can't wrap my head around why people in dead-end careers would continue to work at all in this system.

Because they'd work on something else. And those dead-end careers would either evolve into non-dead-end careers, or get replaced in some manner. I think you have a bit of a static conception of the status quo.

Take, for example, what broke the Soviet Union. It took more than just the general inefficiency of a planned economy. They actually had to be goaded into overinvesting into heavy industry, which actively took away from less glamorous but no less critical industries.

Why not work, save up a bit of cash for leisure, then return early and then live under mommy & daddy government's roof until the day you die?

Inflation. To say nothing of - isn't this what happens anyway?

Regardless, I don't have a single grandparent that hasn't done some form of productive labor since retiring. I don't think I'm alone, by a long shot, in that department.

  If you like to read, just live in your government provided house, eat your government provided food, and go to the library to check out government provided books.  Or better yet:  spend all day on the internet doing nothing while those who are stupid enough to work foot the bill for literally everything you do.

The thing is, people can already do this. Oddly enough, it only really gets bad when there is actually no work available - during the Great Depression and to a lesser extent now. Part of the idea is making sure the labor is available.

It's like asking why do government workers who know they can't be fired still work? Some certainly don't, but the majority, in fact, do.

After all, who needs a job when you've got flash games, porn, and wikipedia.

EDIT:  And none of this speaks to the incompetence of organization bureaucracy.  I just don't have faith in a government that can't even manage to solve problems in a capitalist framework for the fortunate (ignoring the lower 10% of the population's struggles) to do the same for damn near everyone.

Reminds me of something my dad once said:  every time I go to the DMV I'm reminded of why socialism will never work.

Yet no private enterprise has created a network to rival the Internet. Despite trying. Repeatedly. Don't know about where you live but the DMV up here tends to be pretty efficient compared to say, my bank.

Regardless, a part of the reason I think that, save for housing, Ruby's ideas are good is that they remove a lot of bureaucracy from the programs they're replacing. No approval process, you get a couple of vouchers attached to your state ID. Simple and elegant. If you don't get food stamps normally, you can either use it to supplement your income, or if you're feeling particularly generous just forget about using it. Same with the clothing voucher.

And there's nothing like removing the 'you must make less than $10k per year to get free health care' bullshit. The opposition to universal healthcare is -not- about providing it to the homeless. They already get care. The opposition to universal healthcare is about preventing the working poor and self employed from getting health care.

[Noelle]

I already mentioned that the tax for everything Ruby wants, save housing, is 10%. Not 50%.

We're going off of her model. My critique is of her model. She wants a 50% flat tax implemented, which means it doesn't matter if my job pays 30k or 300k, half of it gets shipped off to support people who aren't under any pressure to contribute anything back.

Keep in mind, we already provide everything in Ruby's list to the nation's poorest. Everything. Free cell phones. Free health care. Extremely cheap housing (for as little as $5 a month). Free clothes. Free food. Free books. Free Internet access.

This is misleading. We have a limited budget for all of those things, meaning not everyone is provided for and even if every single poor person applied for those programs, not all of them would be accepted into the program, and that's if the program is available in said poor person's area. There is scarcity not only in terms of the availability of said programs, but the funds we have to spend on the nation's poorest and even that is coming under fire due to budget concerns -- and that's without a no-obligation work policy. Good luck scraping that up when even more people decide to hop off the full-time work wagon.

There is no vehicle in Ruby's list. You want a car? You want fuel for it? You need to work for it. We could probably provide a free bicycle though.

Poor people already have programs that try to get them access to cars because mobility is essential to getting a job, especially for those in areas without public transportation and those living in rural areas. A bike alone isn't going to cut it unless you want to push those people into a catch-22 of "I need a car to get a job" and "I need a job to get a car". This is inconsistent with the rest of her policies.

There is no dining out in Ruby's list. No entertainment budget. No social budget. I find the claim that people in general would be content to sit and rot to be rather specious.

I can go to the movies, eat out, and get sufficiently drunk on a part-time budget, so why wouldn't I? 16 hours a week is pretty cushy, if you ask me, especially if all of my other expenses are paid for and I can basically quit and not have a shred of worry about what to do between jobs.

The only reason for hiking taxes to 50% would be to pay down the debt, really. And when that's done they can go back to 30% or so (defense + social security + other general government functions).

Milking the rich like a cow whenever you're hard-up for cash is like having a friend that only calls you when they want something. How long do those friends want to stick around and help you, exactly? Holding the rich accountable and taxing them fairly along with the others is one thing, but jacking up the tax whenever you feel like it while providing them with little to no incentive to continue to do their work is a pretty shitty deal. Why would they stick around in this country? We would lose our competitive edge over other nations in a hurry -- just look at how hard it is to keep companies in our borders now. Starting up your own business would basically be a joke.

You go on later about how providing cell phones, cars, housing, etc. is "not too much", but that's in a society that expects people who are capable to work to do so. I would totally agree with that sentiment if you were applying it to society as it is today because I think helping people get on their feet and be more competitive in the job market is a good thing and access to those tools helps people become productive citizens. Under Ruby's stated plan, nobody of any age or capability is required to do anything and they still get to reap the benefits of those who do, all while providing frankly awful incentives for anyone to actually work. Why do you need a cell phone if you're not working? That's extraneous. Why do you need access to the internet if you're not planning on doing anything on track to getting a job and contributing back? Technology becomes nothing more than a gateway to leisure activities if you're not actually using it to better the society you live in and I don't really feel like busting my ass at my job and watching half my wages get sucked out to let someone else do absolutely nothing for the country. If you want leisure, you pay for it. That's why we don't have programs in America to send the poor to Disneyland. It's extraneous.

Again, who is going to volunteer to take a job wiping asses at the hospital if they don't actually have to? Who is going to take a career cleaning houses when they know they can pursue literally anything else they want and be supported by the government during the interim while they don't have a job?

This whole plan treats having a job like jobs are an optional add-on in the game of life or like people who choose to work do it because they love what they do. It sucks, but not everyone can do exactly what they want to be doing because someone still needs to handle our garbage and filter the piss out of our water and cleaning up vomit out of urinals. Who wouldn't rather just float by on the system until they get a better job offer rather than do any of those things?

[Star Safyre]

You send me to Wikipedia, and even Wikipedia points out that yes, some goods can, in fact, be relatively abundant. I am not ignorant of basic economic terms or concepts, if you've paid any attention to my posts in this forum at all.


I did not ask what scarcity was, I asked what was, in fact, genuinely scarce enough to physically prevent Ruby's dream from coming to fruition. It's especially relevant, considering that we do most of it anyway, save for housing.

My intention was to lay a semantic groundwork to ensure the term was being used in its technical definition.  You asked "Scarcity of what, exactly?"  My answer was, by the technical definition, everything.  Current abundance has nothing to do with the possibility of a long-term, far-reaching and drastic change in an economic system, as other members have argued here.  Goods decay.  Skilled workers die.  Stating that this system would work because of the surpluses created by the current system is no guarantee that those goods and services will continue to be abundant in their current quantities long after the new system is in place.

For many years I lived under free housing, eating free meals, having free medical care, free clothing, free education, and free phone and internet use in exchange for what little work I half-heartedly did between hours of free time exploring my dream career.  I was a child.  If my parents had continued to fund my lifestyle, I would certainly continue living as a child.  If the government offered the same, surely I'd take them up on it, but I know I, along with a few others here who have voiced their like-minded opinions, would certainly not continue to contribute to productivity and society at my current rate.

[Silverfyre]

You send me to Wikipedia, and even Wikipedia points out that yes, some goods can, in fact, be relatively abundant. I am not ignorant of basic economic terms or concepts, if you've paid any attention to my posts in this forum at all.

I do not think she was saying that you were ignorant of what "scarcity" meant, but rather making it a point of relevance so that everyone was on the same page as far as what the economic definition was.  There is no need to get personal and state that she never paid any attention to your posts on this forum when her replies to you have been thorough and tailored to each response. That's nothing less than an assumption and a wrong one at that.

[Jude]

Your argument starts out with the idea that because the houses already exist we won't need more plumbers to maintain them once they see regular use.  From there you delve into a sea of denial in rejecting that her plan would require any extra effort.  The whole problem is that creating an official welfare state with clearly enumerated benefits opens up what is already problematic to a larger group of people.  If you don't think anyone will quit their job and become lazy, I don't know what reality you live in, but  honestly sit down and ask yourself from the perspective of your own life:  how many of your coworkers are miserably unhappy in their jobs on a daily basis?  How many of them do you know that work pretty much only to support themselves and their family?  How many of them would love to retire, but are afraid they could not survive without their job?

Make a perfect safety net and you'll see cases of "Office Space" syndrome popping up all over the place, and that's the real problem with your arguments:  you ignore that and the effect it will have time and time again no matter how many times I allude to it.

Ignoring even whether or not we can meet these demands now for our entire country, as Star Safyre said much better than I did, our current abundance is a product of our current system.  Take away a lot of the incentive to work, and how can you possibly be sure that the needs will continue to be met?

Your answer for everything seems to be "vouchers," but a piece of paper magically cannot give you access to something, it has to be created physically by another person in order for you to receive it.  You're overly simplifying the differences between what we currently have now and what is being proposed in every category:

Housing:  sure, we provide shelters, but the cost of providing group quarters for the poor in a very utilitarian fashion is nothing compared to giving each and every poor family (or individual if the person is on their own as many are) their own home which then requires upkeep and utilities is another story entirely.  And what about everyone who currently has a house?  Are we going to give the poor free houses but not pay off the mortgage of everyone else?  You can't provide something for a certain segment of the population absolutely free that's worth thousands of dollars then require everyone else to slave away at it.

Food:  The food stamps program is different than providing food universally because our program currently covers about 43 million people and there are about 300 million in the United States.  That's kind of a big difference, unless you're saying that those who choose to work will still have to pay for it out of pocket, and only those who do nothing will get it for free while the workers support them with the money the government takes from them in taxes.  In which case, yay, big incentive not work.

Clothing:  Going back to what I said about food, are we going to make workers pay when non-workers get this for free as well, or are we going to clothe the entire country?

Education:  This isn't something I'd do away with, but we're failing here as is.  Our public education system is absolute crap for the amount of resources that we pour into it, so it isn't exactly a glowing endorsement of government efficiency or efficacy.  Adding free post-secondary education as the cherry on top would likely just make things worse.  We have merit-based scholarships and financial assistance that requires a lot of effort to obtain it in order to minimize the amount of money that is squandered, and college students still end up wasting a lot of opportunities.  I'm not really sure how giving free post-secondary education would go over either when you've got that cushy government subsidized lifestyle waiting for you if you fail too.  And by the way cost me about 40,000 dollars to get my 4 year degree from a relatively cheap state university, so that's no small price tag.

Health Care:  You named situations where having earlier access to health care would cut costs while forgetting that there are a lot of instances where the opposite occurs.  A lot of money is wasted by the paranoid, children faking sick, and frivolous testing.  When people are responsible for the cost of their own health care they're far less likely to abuse it.  When you cut people off from the consequences of their actions they tend to abuse it.  It's true that socialized medicine does not necessarily lead to bankrupt, defunct country.  It is a bill we could probably pay for.  However, it has been established fairly well (and I can pull up the stats if you want) that the best medical system in the world is the France's, which is part public part private.

They do have universal coverage, but they basically have what amounts to a public option for insurance which keeps the private practitioner system functional.  How much do the French pay for this efficient, effective system?  About 60% of 20% of their salaries go into supporting this program, which costs them 12% or so.  It will cost more in the United States for a multitude of reasons including our unhealthy lifestyles (and consequently higher rate of obesity), so your claim of: 

Everything Ruby wants to do, save housing, could be paid for with a 10% tax. This is because we already pay for most of it (one way or another, i.e. for healthcare), already, but still.

is basically nonsense on stilts.  That one aspect alone of Ruby's "plan" is more than 10%.

The only way any of this would represent a modest increase in taxes is if we only provided it to people who did not work, and made people who do work continue to pay for everything themselves.  I can't think of anything more demoralizing than supporting yourself completely while others around you are getting most of what you struggle to earn for free.

[Asuras]

I think Vekseid's right in saying that the economy we now have could support these things.

However, I am skeptical that we could continue to provide that level of output if people got these things for free. If housing, food, utilities, clothing, etc were provided for free I'd probably work part time in a bit job to pay for the cable, computer, and internet and play World of Warcraft all day.

It's kind of strange, but in my mind because I have to work in a full time, real job even for the basic requirements of life, it for some reason follows that "Okay, given that I have to work a full time, real job, let's work in a good, well-paying, productive job."

[OldSchoolGamer]

I don't think a welfare state is the way I'd like to see America go.

Not that we can't or shouldn't import concepts and practices from other countries where they are shown to work.  And not that our economy doesn't need a major overhaul, and our political system a 120,000-mile tune-up.

I am in favor of a national single-payer health care system for one simple reason: it works.  What conservatives in America simply don't understand is that our private health care system is unsustainable.  The Republicans here seem to think the health insurance industry has some God-given right to revenue increases of 5 to 8% every year, in perpetuity, regardless of who has to pay for it or whether the larger economy grows at all.  Well, the Church of Eternal Growth has closed its doors now.  The party is over.  The cheap oil and cheap credit are gone, so Big Health is going to have to downsize along with the rest of the economy.  I think the only way this will happen is if the government steps in and says to the insurance companies, "no, even if you whine like emo kids we WON'T pay 8% more for the same procedure this year and then another 7% more the next year and then 9% more the year after next when inflation is 2.1%.  You get a CPI adjustment like the rest of the population, and that's it.  Don't like it?  Tough.  It's called 'austerity', and the rest of the country is dealing with it.  Buck up, little insurance CEO campers, and if you have to fly commercial rather than your private jet sometimes, tough titty."

As for housing, I think the best way to deal with that situation is to make sure there is NO tax benefit whatsoever to banks sitting on foreclosed homes.  No write-offs, no depreciation, no nothing.  Oh, and fines if they aren't maintained.  Make the banks WANT to liquidate the homes and get them on the market, even at a loss.  Longer-term, we need the government out of the mortgage business.  We need to return to the days when homes were places to live rather than commodities.  People expect commodities to endlessly appreciate. 

As for labor...we have a structural surplus of labor and this is not going to change anytime soon.  Ideally we would begin to tariff cheap imports to get industry back in America, but so many people in such high places have drank the "free-trade-at-all-costs" Kool-Aid that this probably will never happen.  So for the here and now I'd support reducing the workweek to 32 hours.  This would nudge some of the larger corporations sitting on so much cash to increase hiring.

[Zeitgeist]

Where would (if at all) choice come into play in a system like this? If the government is providing these things by way of a tax would we risk having to dispense with choice in favor of economics?

Don't we already have evidence a system like this doesn't work, i.e. Marxism/Leninism? One might argue the exact nature of success and failure when it comes to Socialism versus Capitalism, but last time I checked America, after its foundation has not suffered a revolution or collapse of its government system. No, Capitalism isn't a form of government but in my mind it goes hand-in-hand with a representative republic/democratic system.

In my opinion, a system as suggested would only erode personal liberty, something people died for and risked war for in 1776.

I don't want people to go without anymore than anyone else, but nor do I want people to be beholden to a system that I believe wouldn't ultimately remove choice and liberty. There is no guarantee of success, only of opportunity.

[RubySlippers]

I studied Marx and Leninism the only problem with them is they were instituted stupidly, Mao and Stalin both abused the ideas of Communism to their own ends.

Lets pick a Sci-Fi example Star Trek namely the Federation if one looks at Earth its just as I propose it no one seems to want for anything they need uet oddly most people work at something because most people want to do something. The only difference is technology the ideal is attainable.

I strongly feel the governments highest duty and this is all governments are to provide for all citizens to a basic level essentials to life and an education. Housing in my model would not all be free you can opt out and buy a home you own, just with all the wasted buildings I see alot of places to put people where they can live so if an owner is not using said buildings why not just eminant domain them and run it as a government run housing structure where people live since many people would be in them there would be not the same stigma of public housing in the past.

As for the adult wanting to go home that is simple don't count more than the parents or senior most adult (unless they are caring for an infirmed or otherwise reduced capacity adult) plus children under eighteen. At eighteen they are allowed their own place the government should then reduce the family space accordingly and relocate both parties the new adult to their own place and the parents if in government sponsored housing to a smaller residence. With grace periods and necessary conditions taken into account if a person works out of their home and its also a business space that has to be considered also.

And everyone is a slave to some system what is better being the slave of a corporation having to slave away hours in toil to get what you need and that doesn't always work, I know many that work at McDonalds as adults or at Walmart scraping by at best but without health care access and we have soldiers families on food stamps. Or the government saying here you go you owe us half your pay, you don't have to work as hard but we will decide some things for you and other things your free to do a Communist model.

Under Marx people work to meet their needs and wants to some degree also just the society makes sure you also are free to think and to explore your status as a human being with a mind. People work to provide each other with what is needed and wanted not by force ewither gunpoint or lack of government support but they want to be productive. Is this any different from say the Amish who live well and share some obligations like health care among all the families and see no one is starving that I would argue is Communist in nature just in my case I take out the religion.

[Noelle]

You really haven't addressed any of the issues we've all pointed out about it. You say it would work, but we just provided countless replies that show otherwise. Just wishing it would work isn't enough -- there are countless loopholes that inevitably lead to failure.

[Silverfyre]

That and using a sci-fi example instead of a real life example kind of makes your argument for such a society seem all the more far fetched.  Is there any sort of historical proof that this type of society has ever been implemented and made to work?

[OldSchoolGamer]

That and using a sci-fi example instead of a real life example kind of makes your argument for such a society seem all the more far fetched.  Is there any sort of historical proof that this type of society has ever been implemented and made to work?

Prior to the advent of industrialism, communal economics actually worked fairly well.

I think a point many discussions like this miss is that the nature of work has changed dramatically in the past two centuries.  Here in America, we're rooted in the Protestant work ethic, which itself springs from a document written millennia ago for a Bronze Age civilization (not trying to create a thread derail into religion, and I'll leave the question of the veracity of the Bible for another time and place, but that's the objective truth).  Back then, the primary means of production was agriculture.  When a child came of age (usually around 13 to 16, no ten year period of adolescence like today), women married a man, and men found themselves a plot of land and built a house and proved the land.  Everyone not physically disabled could work.  There was no "unemployment" as we conceptualize it in modern industrial societies, because women were by definition wives, and men needed no one's permission to work.

Then came feudalism, which began the process of putting land ownership and production on a more organized basis, and industrialization, which finished that job.  The means of production are no longer available to all and sundry; permission is now required (i.e., "a job,") to produce wealth.  Yet (especially if Americans listen to the GOP) we still want people denied permission to produce to feel some sort of guilt at their "laziness" or "mooching."  This is especially irrational when you consider the basis under which certain people can be denied this permission--even, in some situations in America, a low credit score.  So someone who is in poverty and seeking employment to rise from poverty can and sometimes is denied employment because...they're poor.  Lazy bums!  Ditto for the rapidly growing, unemployable class of people who have been convicted of a crime.  Did something stupid when you were young?  Well, forget about just moving onto the next town and starting anew--you have a criminal record that bars you from employment for life in America at least.

I'm not going to claim to know all the answers, nor do I necessarily advocate we all go "back to the land."  But I think any honest, intelligent discussion of wealth distribution needs to begin with a recognition of how much the goalposts have been moved by industrialism and the Information Age.

[Star Safyre]

Could any proponents to this system discuss the possible methods of transition should those with the power to do so adopt it? 

What can be said for how equitably property will be redistributed?  Many of the goods being distributed are not commodities.

What if the current surplus in say, home, does not fit the needs of the people.  For instance, say I have a family of five and no unused houses are available in my area which could accommodate my family.  Am I forced to move?  Who pays for the relocation?

Even if homes, clothing, and other needs are going unused, they are still technically the property of a business or individual.  Will there be compensation?  Who decides fair compensation? 

[Sure]

Here in America, we're rooted in the Protestant work ethic,

No. That was a myth made by Protestants to paint Catholics as lazy and justify not hiring them. It is offensive to suggest that and an offensive term itself, just as it would be offensive to claim we are rooted in a 'white' work ethic.

[Noelle]

No. That was a myth made by Protestants to paint Catholics as lazy and justify not hiring them. It is offensive to suggest that and an offensive term itself, just as it would be offensive to claim we are rooted in a 'white' work ethic.

I'm pretty sure you're overstating the offense factor given that this was a theory that was well-covered by Max Weber (he's kind of a big deal!) and continues to be taught in sociology classes today as a possible source, though to my knowledge, it was never actually so boldly proclaimed as "AMERICA IS PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC". It's no more offensive than talking about Marxist values or any other and is just as viable a topic as any other to bring up in this discussion.

[Sure]

I'm pretty sure you're overstating the offense factor given that this was a theory that was well-covered by Max Weber (he's kind of a big deal!) and continues to be taught in sociology classes today as a possible source, though to my knowledge, it was never actually so boldly proclaimed as "AMERICA IS PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC". It's no more offensive than talking about Marxist values or any other and is just as viable a topic as any other to bring up in this discussion.

An early 20th century late 19th century sociologist is not a good citation when trying to deal with anti-Catholic bias as it was a time when it was acceptable. Indeed, Weber put a decent amount of his work into pointing out that Protestantism was superior to Catholicism (and every 'other' religion). And if you want, I can list all the evidence he had to ignore to come to his conclusion.

And I've never seen it taught anywhere, except in the context of the theories of Max Weber. The same way students of Sigmund Freud might read his essays about how women want penises but will never have them. I've never seen it taught on its own as a legitimate belief.

It is no more offensive than talking about openly sexist or racist theories, to suggest it is anything less is to give religious discrimination a lesser place than other kinds.

[Noelle]

The only thing I see wrong with the way it was used in this sense was making the claim that America IS based on the Protestant work ethic rather than saying that the Protestant work ethic is one theory used to describe blah blah, etc.

Obviously it's no secret that the book is wanking over Protestants (well, even that is misleading, given he was especially sympathetic to Calvinists and tossed Lutherans by the wayside, so the title isn't really the best descriptor), but I saw it more of a criticism between two ideologies rather than something akin to saying "women just want to be men" or "burn the Catholics". In religion, there are winners and losers (for those who play, that is) and every religion wants to come out on top :P If you ask me, it's really no more shocking than Christians suggesting that America succeeds because we're a Christian nation.

Anyway, it's a perfectly relevant subject to bring up given that Ruby has already pretty well stated she thinks Marxism is a good idea, which Weber refutes wholly. I'm not defending it as a particularly strong theory (it's not), but beating it out of the discussion isn't really fair, either.

[Vekseid]

Since Asuras basically sums up the total of Jude and Noelle's argument as far as I can tell, and I don't feel like waging wall of text wars on limited time >_>

I did get the taxation cost wrong though. Sorry about that. It would be about 15-20% at full employment (if using a WPA system or whatever).

Universal food stamps: About $600 billion/year. This would be transparent to most people as it just changes the vector of how money gets spent.
Universal health coverage: About $1,200 billion/year, more if excessive specialist testing and procedures weren't reigned in (but they pretty much have to be).
Universal clothing program: About $100 billion/year. Like food aid this would be mostly transparent.
Cell phone for everyone: About $30 billion/year (probably a lot less).
Moving compulsory education into it: I think the current cost is roughly 500-600 billion per year, looking at figures.

Each of these has precedent, and I think ideally would be combined with a Works Progress system to serve as a general recession hedge, rather than be 'free'. Although in that case you could probably eliminate the clothing program.

I think Vekseid's right in saying that the economy we now have could support these things.

However, I am skeptical that we could continue to provide that level of output if people got these things for free. If housing, food, utilities, clothing, etc were provided for free I'd probably work part time in a bit job to pay for the cable, computer, and internet and play World of Warcraft all day.

It's kind of strange, but in my mind because I have to work in a full time, real job even for the basic requirements of life, it for some reason follows that "Okay, given that I have to work a full time, real job, let's work in a good, well-paying, productive job."

I'm not entirely sure it follows that people would be so lazy as to force the tax to become onerous. No doubt some people would be less productive, but - as our needs become more and more automated (driving, to name one example) - it seems that actively encouraging genuine creative pursuits is the direction the economy is going to go in. Hell the entire housing depression is caused by, in part, our physical capacity to produce far, far more than we need. And getting the most out of creative people involves making them -not worry- about money. It turns out that paying too much actually makes them less productive.

I should point out that I don't consider the 'this will make people lazy' argument invalid, just not strong enough to toss the whole thing on its head. Karl Marx may have been wrong when he wrote 'there is enough', but it's certainly true now in the United States. There are enough physical goods to satisfy all needs, and a significant chunk of wants.

Where would (if at all) choice come into play in a system like this? If the government is providing these things by way of a tax would we risk having to dispense with choice in favor of economics?

This sort of argument applies to housing, but there are a lot of good arguments against giving away housing. I've alluded to this already.

For the rest of it, it's actually potentially more flexible in many ways than current systems. I.e. giving each child ages 5-19 a $20k/year (or so) 'grant' for education, that they (or their parents) could take to any accredited institution, rather than the compulsory property-tax based scheme we have now (and various attempts at vouchers designed to make the situation worse). There are a lot of universal health care systems, and they can be done similarly. Solving health care costs are a make or break issue for the economy - either costs are brought to par with other nations, or the system stops working.

The food ration might be used to help drive healthier diets, though. I don't see why you'd argue against more women in the US looking like those in your avatar >_> Diets are very society driven, so it would be a powerful tool, especially amongst the poor, who tend to see candy as the most economic choice for calories. That is not a good situation.

Don't we already have evidence a system like this doesn't work, i.e. Marxism/Leninism?

This is somewhat different than the Soviet experiment. There's no compulsory work - that is, your job isn't assigned for you. Nor is there state seizure of private property. A system like this might be paired with a new Works Progress Administration - i.e. you either work in that or otherwise pay out of your normal job or business - but there's no restriction on your expression of your ability.

One might argue the exact nature of success and failure when it comes to Socialism versus Capitalism, but last time I checked America, after its foundation has not suffered a revolution or collapse of its government system. No, Capitalism isn't a form of government but in my mind it goes hand-in-hand with a representative republic/democratic system.

In my opinion, a system as suggested would only erode personal liberty, something people died for and risked war for in 1776.

Now you are just overdramatizing.

Your freedom to swing your arms ends at the tip of my nose - and actually a foot or so beyond that as you don't have the right to physically threaten me, either.

You don't have the freedom to impose externalities on others - dumping hazardous waste into the water supply or what have you.

You don't have the freedom to declare one sort of good - virtual or not - magical after you horde it, forcing people to exchange valuable goods and services for it after you've established your monopoly.

The first two I don't imagine you have a problem with - but the third is a serious problem, and an example of what is causing many of the hardships we face now. Ruby's ideas basically amount to a rationing system of sorts - you won't have the 'freedom' to hoard.

I don't want people to go without anymore than anyone else, but nor do I want people to be beholden to a system that I believe wouldn't ultimately remove choice and liberty. There is no guarantee of success, only of opportunity.

You don't really demonstrate how most of Ruby's ideas lead to that, just say that it does.

For housing, yes, that is a serious problem with it - the implication of providing housing means you choose where they live and that determines a whole host of other factors. This is only compounded by the fact that they don't necessarily feel responsibility for the property, and might not treat it very well and worse, expect it to get 'replaced' if they say, burn it down.

Or in one home someone was trying to sell to me several years ago, the renters had rented it out to people who had, somehow, managed to compromise the physical structure of the house.

It is vitally important that people care for their residence.

The rest of it would be relatively easy to implement (outside of political obstacles) and have in general a transparent effect on the economy, and also work as a limited degree of recession proofing (as you would be correct in stating that there is planning to it - 'people need to eat this much, so let's ensure that this won't get disrupted in a recession').

Something does need to be done about the ridiculous -cost- of housing, though. I think that's probably best solved by increasing non-homesteaded property taxes, personally.

[Zeitgeist]

You don't really demonstrate how most of Ruby's ideas lead to that, just say that it does.

I do believe there is plenty of evidence all around us that people are successful and happy when given the liberty to make their own choices. No not everyone is successful, but that doesn't mean it is a failure. We just fundamentally disagree on this. Where you or others believe liberty and social justice is found under the prevue of government mechanisms, I believe it is found in the individual. What has been proposed above, sounds like to me a recipe for stagnation and mediocrity.

You mentioned I don't have a right to hoard. Over a relatively short period of time, about 9 months I saved up $2000 spending money for my trip to Rome. Are you saying others have a right to that money I saved? What if I saved $200,000 over nine years? Of course, the money was saved after taxes, so maybe that's a moot point.

[Noelle]

Since Asuras basically sums up the total of Jude and Noelle's argument as far as I can tell, and I don't feel like waging wall of text wars on limited time >_>

Except you still haven't answered a few basic questions, but we'll get to those.

I did get the taxation cost wrong though. Sorry about that. It would be about 15-20% at full employment (if using a WPA system or whatever).

If we're still talking about a flat tax, imposing 20% on everybody regardless of income is still a Very Bad Idea. Flat tax is just a bad deal all together for those who don't make enough to lose a lot of it to begin with. 20% to the upper money-makers makes more sense, but then, a lot of this style of government just doesn't seem to want to address them save as some kind of magic cash cow since you still haven't managed to explain to me why anybody would want to work crap jobs to begin with if they knew they could ride it out on the government -- and working person's dime while waiting for a better offer. "I don't think they'd be that lazy" is not a sufficient reason. Our present system is already abused within its own rules, a more open system would be more open to more abuse.

I'm not entirely sure it follows that people would be so lazy as to force the tax to become onerous. No doubt some people would be less productive, but - as our needs become more and more automated (driving, to name one example) - it seems that actively encouraging genuine creative pursuits is the direction the economy is going to go in. Hell the entire housing depression is caused by, in part, our physical capacity to produce far, far more than we need. And getting the most out of creative people involves making them -not worry- about money. It turns out that paying too much actually makes them less productive.

I have an art degree with a job in the arts that is comfortably supporting me and I can still say that we don't need to make a massive shift to a welfare state to give creative people space to pursue what they want. I work 8 hours a day and still have seven hours in my evening to spend as I wish, including creating art. Again and again, I come back to this -- Why should I clean houses or work on a factory line to let someone else chase butterflies all day? If everybody pursues their dreams, nobody has a reason to do what they don't want to do if they don't have to.

Your automated argument is pointless because automating everything requires still more money to implement where we can, as well as regular maintenance and upkeep, as well as a backup if/when that technology stops functioning (cases of a natural disaster are a fine example), and while we're thinking about it, pile on more money we need because we need to do research to automate other things and make our present technology more efficient. Everything requires maintenance and upkeep or everything eventually crumbles and becomes outdated.

I should point out that I don't consider the 'this will make people lazy' argument invalid, just not strong enough to toss the whole thing on its head. Karl Marx may have been wrong when he wrote 'there is enough', but it's certainly true now in the United States. There are enough physical goods to satisfy all needs, and a significant chunk of wants.

See my previous arguments because it actually is a pretty strong force, not because lazy people will necessarily make the system crumble, but because letting lazy people have free run gives others less incentive to work in a system that is already greatly and unfathomably biased towards those who do work. This system heard conservatives stereotype liberals and then made a system tailored exactly to those complaints. I'm generally a left-leaning moderate, but this system makes me feel like going full-blown Fox News because I'm horrified at the thought of working 40 hours a week so someone can pursue their dreams of _______ that allows them to do whatever they want all day. Not everybody in this system can do that. You still need work horses and if you're not giving those work horses a carrot, why are they going keep hauling everyone else behind them? Even if I worked a job I loved, even with my liberal beliefs, I'm not okay with giving a cell phone and internet access to someone with no interest in contributing back to the world in any way, shape, or form or who thinks their Harry Potter slashfic is going to make them famous someday.

I don't see why you'd argue against more women in the US looking like those in your avatar >_>

Because this is, frankly, a stupid and sexist joke.

[Sure]

The only thing I see wrong with the way it was used in this sense was making the claim that America IS based on the Protestant work ethic rather than saying that the Protestant work ethic is one theory used to describe blah blah, etc.

How is bringing up a discredited theory that was used mainly as a mechanism to discriminate against a group of people legitimately to this discussion at all?

Obviously it's no secret that the book is wanking over Protestants (well, even that is misleading, given he was especially sympathetic to Calvinists and tossed Lutherans by the wayside, so the title isn't really the best descriptor), but I saw it more of a criticism between two ideologies rather than something akin to saying "women just want to be men" or "burn the Catholics". In religion, there are winners and losers (for those who play, that is) and every religion wants to come out on top :P If you ask me, it's really no more shocking than Christians suggesting that America succeeds because we're a Christian nation.

Regardless of your beliefs about religion, you are reducing 'The Protestant Work Ethic' to the works of Weber. Which is kind of like reducing Communism to the works of Marx. It ignores a lot of the nastier aspects by only looking at one (obviously sympathetic) source and ignoring the way society actually treated the ideology, or how others added to it afterward. And in no way does it change the fact that, even within Weber's own theories, it is a theory made by someone who thought his religion was superior to justify that belief which falls apart when looked at.

Anyway, it's a perfectly relevant subject to bring up given that Ruby has already pretty well stated she thinks Marxism is a good idea, which Weber refutes wholly. I'm not defending it as a particularly strong theory (it's not), but beating it out of the discussion isn't really fair, either.

See above, how is it relevant? It's a discredited theory and one that primarily concerns itself with establishing a framework within which it is justifiable to discriminate against other religions.

Because this is, frankly, a stupid and sexist joke.

Stupid perhaps, sexist no. Referring to and upholding a standard of feminine beauty, and implying women should strive towards it, is not sexism, because there is an equal standard of masculine beauty (handsomeness, if you prefer). There is no inequity since both genders are being told to be insecure about themselves and to strive for unrealistic or even impossible standards by the media.

[Vekseid]

Stupid perhaps, sexist no. Referring to and upholding a standard of feminine beauty, and implying women should strive towards it, is not sexism, because there is an equal standard of masculine beauty (handsomeness, if you prefer). There is no inequity since both genders are being told to be insecure about themselves and to strive for unrealistic or even impossible standards by the media.

It's more a reference that there is a lot of evidence that obesity is partially driven by your social surroundings (or lack thereof). A national program could do a lot of good in counteracting this. Obviously it affects men, too.

I do believe there is plenty of evidence all around us that people are successful and happy when given the liberty to make their own choices. No not everyone is successful, but that doesn't mean it is a failure. We just fundamentally disagree on this. Where you or others believe liberty and social justice is found under the prevue of government mechanisms, I believe it is found in the individual. What has been proposed above, sounds like to me a recipe for stagnation and mediocrity.

Yeah, because when I was shitting blood and throwing up my own bile, my choices of suffering were quite varied. I was wracked with pain so frequently that I could not even get out of bed some days, much less go to a job interview and do something so excruciating as sit down and talk to someone, assuming I was actually able to talk that day. Learning how to properly untangle my own intestines from my nuts is a valuable skill, don't you think? My first business failed and I nearly lost everything - including this place.

...so yeah. I'm a big proponent of universal health care. I was before I went through that, but the shear insanity of losing years of my life for fear of the hospital visit costs - $1,500, by the way - just struck me as beyond galling. I sure as hell lost a lot more than $1,500 over it - it was fear that kept me away.

That isn't the way things need to be, and other countries are doing a very good job of proving that. Look at how many nations with universal health care we are in debt to. Look at how many of them are more creative, in patents per capita. Look at how many of them have superior technical services. Look at those of them that are, per person, richer - Norway, for example - despite working fewer hours.

Make no mistake, I'm all for capitalism on those goods where the Market hypothesis holds. And I'll concede that food and clothing are two of these - but I don't think giving them a planned hedge would be an excessive burden.

You mentioned I don't have a right to hoard. Over a relatively short period of time, about 9 months I saved up $2000 spending money for my trip to Rome. Are you saying others have a right to that money I saved? What if I saved $200,000 over nine years? Of course, the money was saved after taxes, so maybe that's a moot point.

Are you seriously claiming that by having $200,000 in cash, that you actually have significant control of the money supply?

Not to mention the fact that you actually don't have full control over it, unless you're storing it as cash under your bed. Why do you think the FDIC exists? The money you save is being lent out and allowed to remain in circulation, despite it being 'yours'. Part of the problem, now, is that system has broken down, yes - but nothing stops the bank from giving your money to a hobo, and without the FDIC (since you're discussing a pathetically trivial amount of money compared to the size of the money supply), you could lose it in a bank run.

You'll need to jack your example up about six orders of magnitude before we can begin to have that sort of discussion. What are you planning on doing with $200 billion, and why should the United States Mint not print more to compensate for you manipulating the market with it?

An alternative, less drastic scenario would be the rationing of oil to prevent microhoarding. But when it comes to currency there's nothing particularly wrong with a high savings rate as long as it's still getting cycled into the economy, and moderate inflation is generally enough to discourage excessive saving.

Except you still haven't answered a few basic questions, but we'll get to those.

If we're still talking about a flat tax, imposing 20% on everybody regardless of income is still a Very Bad Idea. Flat tax is just a bad deal all together for those who don't make enough to lose a lot of it to begin with. 20% to the upper money-makers makes more sense, but then, a lot of this style of government just doesn't seem to want to address them save as some kind of magic cash cow since you still haven't managed to explain to me why anybody would want to work crap jobs to begin with if they knew they could ride it out on the government -- and working person's dime while waiting for a better offer. "I don't think they'd be that lazy" is not a sufficient reason. Our present system is already abused within its own rules, a more open system would be more open to more abuse.

20% if there was a new Works Progress Administration driving employment, under such a system there would be little 'being lazy'. But a new WPA would remove the need for most of it anyway.

I have an art degree with a job in the arts that is comfortably supporting me and I can still say that we don't need to make a massive shift to a welfare state to give creative people space to pursue what they want. I work 8 hours a day and still have seven hours in my evening to spend as I wish, including creating art. Again and again, I come back to this -- Why should I clean houses or work on a factory line to let someone else chase butterflies all day? If everybody pursues their dreams, nobody has a reason to do what they don't want to do if they don't have to.

Becuase you're not actually addressing my argument, you're addressing Ruby's, and I'm not going to answer for her support of universal, free housing.

Your automated argument is pointless because automating everything requires still more money to implement where we can, as well as regular maintenance and upkeep, as well as a backup if/when that technology stops functioning (cases of a natural disaster are a fine example), and while we're thinking about it, pile on more money we need because we need to do research to automate other things and make our present technology more efficient. Everything requires maintenance and upkeep or everything eventually crumbles and becomes outdated.

Pointless? Automation is a labor force multiplier. That's its purpose. Right now we're at a point where between a third to a half of our economy supplies not only all of our basic needs but also a lot of cool features that we consider to be a perk of living in a modern society. Part of the reason for the current recession is that this automation is reducing the demand for even skilled labor.

See my previous arguments because it actually is a pretty strong force, not because lazy people will necessarily make the system crumble, but because letting lazy people have free run gives others less incentive to work in a system that is already greatly and unfathomably biased towards those who do work. This system heard conservatives stereotype liberals and then made a system tailored exactly to those complaints. I'm generally a left-leaning moderate, but this system makes me feel like going full-blown Fox News because I'm horrified at the thought of working 40 hours a week so someone can pursue their dreams of _______ that allows them to do whatever they want all day. Not everybody in this system can do that. You still need work horses and if you're not giving those work horses a carrot, why are they going keep hauling everyone else behind them? Even if I worked a job I loved, even with my liberal beliefs, I'm not okay with giving a cell phone and internet access to someone with no interest in contributing back to the world in any way, shape, or form or who thinks their Harry Potter slashfic is going to make them famous someday.

Except, again, I'm not really defending free housing.

But there is enough housing that we could work out incentives to make this work, even if it wouldn't be 'free'. Or if all people got was a communal shelter with limited computer access and an address.

[Noelle]

I'm not really here to talk in-depth about the Puritan Work Ethic because it's not even really on topic necessarily. I'm sorry if you felt offended by the other person's usage of the theory, but if you'd like to continue to discuss it elsewhere, feel free. I've stated my view on the subject.

In terms of sexism, yes it was a sexist comment and it is degrading. It was an objectifying comment made about women in general and I found it unnecessary. I'm not here to cause an uproar about it, I just thought I would point out that it was kind of an offensive thing to say and that perhaps it could've been left out entirely. I don't really expect an apology or retraction at any rate, I just thought it was worth mentioning since I was sure this was a forum that tried to keep things polite and it kind of took me by surprise. If I'm mistaken, please correct me, but please don't marginalize.

Becuase you're not actually addressing my argument, you're addressing Ruby's, and I'm not going to answer for her support of universal, free housing.

Except I am addressing your argument, which I quoted specifically for that purpose. I'll break it down for you.

You say this:

I'm not entirely sure it follows that people would be so lazy as to force the tax to become onerous. No doubt some people would be less productive, but - as our needs become more and more automated (driving, to name one example) - it seems that actively encouraging genuine creative pursuits is the direction the economy is going to go in. Hell the entire housing depression is caused by, in part, our physical capacity to produce far, far more than we need. And getting the most out of creative people involves making them -not worry- about money. It turns out that paying too much actually makes them less productive.

The message I'm getting: It's okay to let people stop working to chase their dreams, whatever they are. It's okay to let people "not worry about money" and let someone else do the work for them so they can do what they want, even if doing what they want entails no work and no economic contributions.

I refute you with -- why do I have to work so someone else can pursue their non-contributive dream? If we encourage artists, for example, to sit at home and paint all day because that's all they want to do, why do I have to foot the bill if they're not giving anything back? Who is going to clean toilets if they have the option to do something else and do it on someone else's dime?

This is perfectly relevant to what you just said and if it's not, do explain how it's not instead of dismissing me based on things I'm not even talking about.

Pointless? Automation is a labor force multiplier. That's its purpose. Right now we're at a point where between a third to a half of our economy supplies not only all of our basic needs but also a lot of cool features that we consider to be a perk of living in a modern society. Part of the reason for the current recession is that this automation is reducing the demand for even skilled labor.

Pointless in terms of your tax code. We would have to jack up taxes yet again to pay for the implementation of automation in as many places as possible, as well as maintenance and research. Who's going to cover that? How many things are we going to automate? In which industries? Which workers are we going to displace? How far and how much are we going to automate? And so forth.

Except, again, I'm not really defending free housing.

I feel like you're reading a different post than I wrote, because I have not explicitly mentioned free housing anywhere. You, yourself brought up that giving everyone things like a cell phone and internet access should be some kind of universal right and I am rebutting that point by saying that I am not paying for someone's leisure activities if they're not contributing anything back. Please actually address the things I say instead of dismissing them in a sentence that puts words where they don't exist.

[Jude]

Vekseid, your position differs from what Ruby staked out in a big way (or perhaps that is just my understanding of it).  What I got from Ruby's position is that she believes that all of those things should be rights -- something that cannot be taken away except in very extreme circumstances (in the way prisoners can be denied certain rights for example) -- guaranteed by our laws.

I'm not against offering these things as a bridge to helping people become productive members of our society.  If we make it contingent upon participation in a works progress administration for example, I have no problem with just about anything that was mentioned.  There are very few people in this country that cannot work at all, and if we required them to do sensible tasks in order to "earn" it (even if those tasks are "easier" than what a normal person is required to do) then I see this as fair.  For example, someone who is bedridden can still answer phones in a reasonably stressless way in order to take simple messages.  Giving them a reasonable standard of living in exchange for that is totally OK with me.  And I'm sure there are people who are completely unable to work at all, ever... And I'm okay with supporting them too.

What I don't agree with is unconditionally providing these things for the entire country on the basis of a right, much like you have a "right" to not be arrested for exercising your right to free speech (excepting the very few prohibited areas)

Cell phones are a bit of a gray area -- land lines would do fine.  I don't think we need to give people their own homes unless they do have a family (one large enough to justify it) and even then it should be a very tentative, impermanent arrangement.  The internet I flat out disagree on; you only need access to it, not to have it in your home in order to look for a job (which your local library has).  But the rest?  I can't object to helping people get back on their feet.  But making it a right means you can do nothing and get by and no one can stop you.  That, to me, is a disastrous idea.

[Serephino]

Thing is, there already is an incentive to be lazy.  It was Veks I believe, that pointed out the income limit for most of these programs is 10k a year.  It was also pointed out that it's insane because you can't live on that.  Working makes it so that you can't have access to these programs.

There was a thread here before about a lady living somewhere that had a shitload of kids and lived off the government's dime.  A boyfriend I had in high school lived with his mom and brothers in public housing.  The brother of a friend sits around and smokes pot all day in the same public housing.

Because, you see, if you don't have a job you can go live in the Projects for $5 a month.  This includes basic utilities like water, electric, and heat.  Internet, TV, and anything but basic phone service is a luxury, so you'd have to figure out a way to pay for those.  You can also get free health care, and food stamps.  So really, with the safety net that's already there, what's the incentive to work more than maybe 16 hours a week? 

Yes, the system is currently being abused.  I won't argue that, but there is actually less incentive to work with the system as is.  If you can get a good job, that's great, but my boyfriend flips burgers at McDonalds.  That's hardly enough to live on, but it's too much to receive free medical care.  I receive Disability, but that too is too much to receive health care.  I can get Medicare paid for, but that is fairly worthless as is.  My boyfriend can't get anything, and he has a heart condition that needs monitoring.  He could quit his job and go live in the Projects and get that all taken care of, or continue slaving away without care until something major happens and he gets saddled with a bill he can't pay. 

I don't go to the doctor unless something major is wrong because I simply cannot afford an office visit ($82).  I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't call up the office to get antibiotics called in for simple infections that I've had before.  I've ended up costing hospitals thousands of dollars by going into the ER instead of my family doctor because the ER can't turn me away or make me pay anything up front.  How is that better than giving me Medicaid so I can get these things taken care of before they become a problem?  I had step throat, but only went to the ER when my voice was completely gone. 

I think Ruby's system is a bit extreme, and could be taken advantage of, but the current system punishes those who do work, but are still poor.  What I would say we need to do is raise those stupid income limits.  Oh, and while you're all talking about those who would paint all day, or play WoW all day, there's one thing you haven't thought of.  The system would only provide basic needs.  Where would the art supplies come from?  How would someone not working pay $14.99/month to keep WoW on?

Under this system, sure, you could not work, but you'd pretty much have to either spend all day at the library, or stare at a wall the rest of your life.  The incentive to work would be the fact that people like to do things.  I like to eat out.  I like to go shopping.  I like going to the movies.  I have been known to enjoy bowling.  All of that takes money, and would not be included in food and clothes vouchers.  If one wants more than the basics, then one would have to work.  I don't know about you, but even lazy people are rarely happy with nothing but basics.  Even my ex liked video games and swords, and took me out to dinner when he had the money.  That's why most people work now and constantly struggle.   

[Vekseid]

Except I am addressing your argument, which I quoted specifically for that purpose. I'll break it down for you.

You say this:

The message I'm getting: It's okay to let people stop working to chase their dreams, whatever they are. It's okay to let people "not worry about money" and let someone else do the work for them so they can do what they want, even if doing what they want entails no work and no economic contributions.

That's where society is moving, yep.

I refute you with -- why do I have to work so someone else can pursue their non-contributive dream? If we encourage artists, for example, to sit at home and paint all day because that's all they want to do, why do I have to foot the bill if they're not giving anything back? Who is going to clean toilets if they have the option to do something else and do it on someone else's dime?

I think I've made it clear that people should still need to work for housing. But I don't see any particular reason why making sure that everyone has access to food, clothing, health and communication no matter what disaster may strike them is a bad thing.

Because here is the thing - all of this stuff is available to you if you refuse to work.

I was denied health care because I made more than $10k per year. And everything else would be, too. Everything on Ruby's list, though the housing was subsidized. Didn't matter that all of my income went to legitimate business expenses. Those deductions don't count - just my raw, unadjusted income.

So, since you can stop working, and after about a year you'll be eligible for these things, why don't you? All you'll need is $5/month to pay for your share of the subsidized housing.

The price, of course, is you'll have to live next to the sort of people who made that decision, too, or through one circumstance or another are forced into it (that happens). This option is available - but you actually have to commit to being useless to society. You claim you would - but why aren't you?

In the mean time, the rest of the benefits on Ruby's list don't carry that sort of social price to implement. Most of your standard of living is bound up in where you live, after all.

This is perfectly relevant to what you just said and if it's not, do explain how it's not instead of dismissing me based on things I'm not even talking about.

Pointless in terms of your tax code. We would have to jack up taxes yet again to pay for the implementation of automation in as many places as possible, as well as maintenance and research. Who's going to cover that? How many things are we going to automate? In which industries? Which workers are we going to displace? How far and how much are we going to automate? And so forth.

What does public investment have to do with the progress of automation?

What do you think a jobless recovery means, and how do you think that happens? Magic? We employ fewer people, pay them less, have them work fewer hours, but they are producing more.

Hint: It's not magic. And a sixth of the population is feeling the effects of that not being magic, even though we are actually producing the resources to support them just fine. I am not claiming that the best solution is to provide their needs for free, but trying to pretend that part of the issue is not the progress of more and more advanced automation is just sticking your head in the sand.

In the end, no, there won't be any need for non-creative labor. Will it happen during our lifetime? Maybe. I'm not sure. It's worth discussing, however, because it has immense social ramifications, and all signs point to this occurring incredibly fast in the scale of human history.

Why should you clean toilets instead of the robot? I have no idea, maybe you're into that sort of thing.

I feel like you're reading a different post than I wrote, because I have not explicitly mentioned free housing anywhere. You, yourself brought up that giving everyone things like a cell phone and internet access should be some kind of universal right and I am rebutting that point by saying that I am not paying for someone's leisure activities if they're not contributing anything back. Please actually address the things I say instead of dismissing them in a sentence that puts words where they don't exist.

Alright, so why don't you?

Have you actually applied to these programs and see why you get turned down?

You have to be working part time, minimum wage, in order to get many of these benefits. Full time minimum wage? Sorry, you're obviously not struggling as much - you've got $15k per year, what could you possibly need!? Go pop out some babies or something and come back to us.

And if you're childless and self employed you can get lost.

Vekseid, your position differs from what Ruby staked out in a big way (or perhaps that is just my understanding of it).  What I got from Ruby's position is that she believes that all of those things should be rights -- something that cannot be taken away except in very extreme circumstances (in the way prisoners can be denied certain rights for example) -- guaranteed by our laws.

I think food, communication, health care and education should be rights.

You don't necessarily have the right to hours of communication per day, much less unlimited communication, but you should be able to contact loved ones, potential employers, emergency services, and so on. You don't necessarily have the right to unlimited Internet access, but you should at least have access to a shared, secured, publicly visible computer where you can check e-mail, the news, and so on.

You don't necessarily have the right to eat out, or order pizza, but you should not starve and should be able to eat healthily even in the event of some personal catastrophe. Putting everyone on what amounts to food stamps doesn't really have much of a negative economic 'cost' to it, it just means that you don't have to jump through hoops in order to get what you need in the event of disaster. It can also be used (absent political gaming which no doubt would happen without other precautions - but we're assuming those are in place for sake of argument) - to help drive public health.

You don't necessarily have the right to cosmetic surgery, but we're paying a heavy price for the lack of preventative care - that should be a right, just as much as emergency care is a right now.

You don't necessarily have the right to pursue an art degree on the public dime, but evidence seems to show that two years of college / trade school are the most productive, so providing 15 years of education rather than 13 seems like a good idea.

You don't necessarily have the right to designer clothing, but you shouldn't have to risk freezing to death or appear unsuitable for work.

You don't necessarily have the right to live in a dream home, but if your employer requires a mailing address, you should be able to have one. If they can require you show up clean, you should have access to a shower.

...by all means, make it as spartan as you want. Make sure people don't like living that way. But we need to make sure people are facing a minimum number of unfunded mandates in their personal lives.

Now, these rights should not be constitutionally mandated. I don't believe a state's constitution should place a burden on said state - because it's purpose is to set guidelines and limitations, not set mandates. I rather dislike the 4th amendment in principle for this reason, though I would be fine with the amendment being changed to ensure that the law is accessible, or that prosecution must pay a stipend for defense.

I'm not against offering these things as a bridge to helping people become productive members of our society.  If we make it contingent upon participation in a works progress administration for example, I have no problem with just about anything that was mentioned.  There are very few people in this country that cannot work at all, and if we required them to do sensible tasks in order to "earn" it (even if those tasks are "easier" than what a normal person is required to do) then I see this as fair.  For example, someone who is bedridden can still answer phones in a reasonably stressless way in order to take simple messages.  Giving them a reasonable standard of living in exchange for that is totally OK with me.  And I'm sure there are people who are completely unable to work at all, ever... And I'm okay with supporting them too.

Well yes. I'm not defending Ruby's proposal as ideal. Or saying that the ideal situation is a 20% flat tax to provide these things even with said program. Just that the math is there and the goods are there, and it is not physically impossible to do.

I do think the government should have a general works progress agency that never quits, but whose sole purpose is to basically provide 'full employment'. It will gain employees during recessions and lose them as the private sector picks up again. It would ensure that skills stay fresh, that people don't face liquidity crisises, etc. But that's a different topic.

What I don't agree with is unconditionally providing these things for the entire country on the basis of a right, much like you have a "right" to not be arrested for exercising your right to free speech (excepting the very few prohibited areas)

Cell phones are a bit of a gray area -- land lines would do fine.

Cell phones are cheaper. It helps that the entire project could be funded by a properly sized price-fixing lawsuit. Plus you can give everyone one and use the built-in system to restrict time, while giving shared landlines has logistical pains.

I don't think we need to give people their own homes unless they do have a family (one large enough to justify it) and even then it should be a very tentative, impermanent arrangement.

No, even then it's a bad idea.

If you don't own something, you don't feel as responsible for it. Addressing and encouraging home ownership is going to require something above and beyond the scope of Ruby's proposal here.

People do need an address they can be mailed at, though.

  The internet I flat out disagree on; you only need access to it, not to have it in your home in order to look for a job (which your local library has).

That's basically what I meant. To get real access you'd need to pay, but it would either be communal or bandwidth-limited.

But the rest?  I can't object to helping people get back on their feet.  But making it a right means you can do nothing and get by and no one can stop you.  That, to me, is a disastrous idea.

Keep in mind that, in this thread, I'm speaking partially from personal experience.

I was turned down for government health care because I 'made' too much, which, at the time, the limit was about $8k or $9k per year. To which my business expenses didn't apply - I certainly had more than that in revenue, but I had advertising agreements, my vehicle, etc. that all needed payment, and weren't getting it.

On a lark I looked up other benefit systems and found pretty much the same story - the income limit is set so ridiculously low for so many programs, that it's the people who work the hardest who get treated the worst. If you're self employed your problems are even worse, because none of your expenses count (though, thankfully, the IRS will bend over backwards for you).

[RubySlippers]

We as a society should get past having to work to survive to work because you choose to do a certain thing or not. And it would help employment if a person had to work and at a crappy job like garbage collection and waste removal you could get paid doing it for 20 hours a week and then be free the rest of the time. And with the nature of the job it would likely pay more that other work. Many might choose options more demanding like serving in the military who under my system never have to worry about their families having a home, food, clothing, education and health care which is an issue now. Same for those in law enforcement or other professions these might demand more hours but people do them often because they want to do them even fire fighters don't get paid extraordinarily or police or teachers.

As for housing it would match the need a single adult would get a dorm room similar to college with a cafeteria and other needs, paying fines for any damages you don't repair etc. A married person would get a bigger place sutied to two people. Children would require likely a house but big enough for them to live in. But people can own homes and would argue with the money they could save if they opted to work more could be attainable with savings. A two income couple making ,after taxes, $40k a year could save half that and own a home outright in at most ten years in many places less and in some places more.

I don't want the government to make jobs that is for the private market and self-employment which is why I'm proposing this an end to doing work you don't want to do and more time for what you want to do for work, with unpleasant work paying more to get people to do it. I want a doctor to leave school with no big debts so they are free to practice medicine at a lower income than now. I want a teacher to teach and not have to worry about the little things. I want a street clown making tips to pay half of that and having a place to live and his basic needs covered.

I just don't think there is such a thing as a job not worth anything if your a budding poet is handing out your poetry and reciting it for tips your a poet and by your nature make your community better. If you flip burgers for money then its honest and you should have your needs met plus make some money to. In our society though both are denigrades and don't support the doer of them unless they are wage slaves. Slavery by controlling the check is still to me slavery and may be wore than the institution we had with blacks forced to come here. Its not as overtly vbad but wage slavery is insideous and colder.

[Jude]

It's not society's fault that people have to work to survive, that's a function of our very existence.  We have basic needs that must be fulfilled as a result of our biology.  Trying to put together a government to circumvent that requirement for survival is a futile effort because it's an attempt at denying the facts of human nature.  It sounds good on paper, but like any other utopian idea, I see no reason to believe it wouldn't crash and burn when everyone quits their 9-5 office grind in order to sleep late and pull their guitar out of the attic for an hour every week to harass their neighbors with the soothing sounds of self-assured delusional melodic dissonance.

[Noelle]

That's where society is moving, yep.

Did I miss the memo on this? According to who? Last I checked, more people are worrying about money and jobs than ever. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, we have had a tenuous slide of people gradually losing their jobs to automation or outsourcing, so they are forced to find a job in a more relevant place. Our nation is generally conservative and is constantly taking steps to slash welfare and people from all over the political spectrum are speculating on welfare reform. College tuition is rising, federal grants are on the decline, and that makes college harder to access for those who are precisely getting welfare. How is that a step in the direction of fewer people worrying about money and doing what they want?

I think I've made it clear that people should still need to work for housing. But I don't see any particular reason why making sure that everyone has access to food, clothing, health and communication no matter what disaster may strike them is a bad thing.

I think I've made it clear that I'm not talking about housing. I would argue that providing for people who are capable of helping themselves and choose not to is a waste of my money. People who genuinely cannot work or do anything whatsoever, I would argue, are few and far between. If you are capable of doing something for yourself and you don't, why is my responsibility to pick up the tab? A social safety net in our present society is something I could agree with you on -- I think providing for those who are struggling and picking up the ends they can't is a good thing. We can agree on that. However, it's a good thing because we're helping them get on their feet so they can contribute something back to the country that is providing for them. That is the big stipulation here.

I was denied health care because I made more than $10k per year. And everything else would be, too. Everything on Ruby's list, though the housing was subsidized. Didn't matter that all of my income went to legitimate business expenses. Those deductions don't count - just my raw, unadjusted income.

So, since you can stop working, and after about a year you'll be eligible for these things, why don't you? All you'll need is $5/month to pay for your share of the subsidized housing.

The price, of course, is you'll have to live next to the sort of people who made that decision, too, or through one circumstance or another are forced into it (that happens). This option is available - but you actually have to commit to being useless to society. You claim you would - but why aren't you?

I didn't claim I would. I actually enjoy being a productive member of society. I've been through low wages and unemployment and they were miserable. I work a full-time job that I support myself on, student loan debt and all, and with nobody else's help and I still don't have health insurance.

What's misleading is you're tying up today's standards with a hypothetical standard that Ruby has set up for us here. Of course I wouldn't choose to quit my job and go into a welfare state today -- but you're not entirely accurate when you say all of this stuff is already available to people with low income because it's not. We have one of the worst social safety nets in the first world, especially in comparison to Europe. You make these things sound like a trip to Oprah's Favorite Things where everyone gets a cell phone, home heating, internet access, and more. Not everybody who applies gets what they want because we have limited funding for the poor and it's only getting worse. There's no guarantee there at all, and that's why nobody would likely choose to quit their job and go on welfare in this nation at the present and that is why it's misleading to use it as a standard against an automatic welfare state where everything is provided to everyone regardless.

What does public investment have to do with the progress of automation?

Because we don't live in a vacuum where money means nothing and things innovate, develop, install, and maintain themselves?

What do you think a jobless recovery means, and how do you think that happens? Magic? We employ fewer people, pay them less, have them work fewer hours, but they are producing more.

Which works if you're simultaneously creating new jobs to replace those lost and you stop outsourcing so much, or else you have job recovery that may show unemployment is going down statistically, but it's at a crawl. Pretty sure that's where America's sitting right now.

In the end, no, there won't be any need for non-creative labor. Will it happen during our lifetime? Maybe. I'm not sure. It's worth discussing, however, because it has immense social ramifications, and all signs point to this occurring incredibly fast in the scale of human history.

Why should you clean toilets instead of the robot? I have no idea, maybe you're into that sort of thing.

Except that whole glaring part where we don't use robots on a large scale for that in the world we live in right now and presumably don't have them in the scenario that Ruby has set up for us in this thread, so maybe there's another reason why I should sit and scrub shit all day instead of floating by on government cash until something else comes along? I feel like a broken record because there's not a good reason for this and nobody seems to want to address it in the context of things that are actually viable right now. A fully automated manual labor sector is a long ways off, I'm not even going to pretend it's viable in this lifetime because we lack the money to implement and maintain that kind of technology on a large scale. What if we had robots that did everything and what if we all lived like the people on Wall-E? I think a better question is how is that even relevant to the situation we're dealing with?

Have you actually applied to these programs and see why you get turned down?

You have to be working part time, minimum wage, in order to get many of these benefits. Full time minimum wage? Sorry, you're obviously not struggling as much - you've got $15k per year, what could you possibly need!? Go pop out some babies or something and come back to us.

And if you're childless and self employed you can get lost.

Your point is what, exactly? I've already addressed our current welfare system being incomparable to a total welfare state earlier, so I don't really feel the need to repeat it, but I would hardly see our current welfare system to be a fit example to compare to considering it's not even a fraction of what a total welfare state would be, as you've just proven for me. And considering there is already abuse to aspects of our welfare system as is, flaws and all, I shudder to think how the same people would treat a total given welfare state where they're not actually obligated to try and work at all.

And, to answer your question, I have applied to low-income programs before to get by. I am well aware. Don't know about your educational experience, but going to college puts you in a pretty awful situation financially when your schoolwork is already like a full-time job and you still need to make money to survive, and don't even get me started on what it's like after you graduate.



As for Ruby's post and a little bit just in general:

Truthfully, the argument against work sounds childish to me. I really have little sympathy for people who feel like they deserve to only do things for themselves when in fact it is society that is providing for them. Humans are tribal and we all have a part to play to make that tribe work. I'm not going to haul rocks to build a bridge when someone else is busy writing slashfic to wank to. Conversely, if the whole village sits around and writes slashfic to wank to, nothing gets done and society as a whole collapses because we were too busy masturbating to fix it. Everyone has to play their part at least some of the time and there has to be an incentive to do it.

On another note, people who have no talent don't deserve to be paid like those who do. Terrible fanfiction should be rooted out just as the masterpieces should rise to the top. If you're bad at painting, either get better or don't expect to earn much. The things people do are not automatically relevant or good for society -- a terrible poet who feels the need to yell his awful work from the rooftops at 2AM because it's a part of his creative process is not relevant to me. Not everybody can live their dreams because not everybody's dream is compatible. If my dream is to be a full-time nudist organ-grinder, that's not viable in a civilized society as we know it.

In reality today, I don't expect to make a lot of money with my art degree because art is not that important to our basic needs. Art does not keep people alive, art does not improve our lifespan or heal sicknesses. It doesn't make faster computers, it doesn't keep our streets safe, it doesn't save lives. I am aware of my career path's importance relevant to society and frankly, I would feel wrong making as much as a doctor, "just because". Creative pursuits take a back seat to practicality for a reason and I'm okay with that.

Even just ignoring the economic aspects of this plan, it just doesn't work because it fails to acknowledge that not everybody can get what they want. Not everybody can follow their dreams. We don't live in a society run by robots and probably won't for a long, long time.

[RubySlippers]

I'm not anti-work but anti-slavery work there is a difference. If one does something they either enjoy doing or do to get by makes a difference to me. If its the former its making money while having enjoyment some people may like inventing things and others cooking and others have other things they enjoy. I think also some people must work to get along doing what they don't like but do it. I just want to encourage the former and make the latter as painless as possible with no need to do it as much.

A fundamental trade off is also you won't get everything handed to you if you don't work at all and can you still must provide things for yourself either they are not essentials (scented soap, toothpaste, deorderant etc.) or a luxury (television, cable, internet in the home, a car, college or education over the K-12 level) or money for retirement. And for the security of not having to worry so if you opt to go to college and become a doctor most of your money can go to that you will get your other needs mostly met while your going to school or you could save up and buy a home outright with no loans in a fair amount of time. You forget this would also end lots of horrible things homelessness, unemployment (if fewer people work a business must then hire more people), drudgery, offer more free time to be happy all these are good plus a less stressed person makes for a better worker.

[Star Safyre]

I'm not anti-work but anti-slavery work there is a difference. If one does something they either enjoy doing or do to get by makes a difference to me. If its the former its making money while having enjoyment some people may like inventing things and others cooking and others have other things they enjoy.

What if what I want to do is sit in my free house, smoke pot, and eat free food?  What if I want to do is run a hate-mongering website?  What if I want to create ugly art which no one wants to buy and I don't believe attending art school or taking criticism will improve it?  What if I want to write grammatically incorrect smut on the internet all day?  What if I want to be a doctor but I have a learning disability which restricts me from reading any higher than a 5th grade level even after more than a decade of educational interventions?  Should workers be taxed to pay for me to be enabled to do these things?  Why do you assume that everyone has an unobtainable "dream job" or a latent creative talent that is being stifled by gainful employment?

I think also some people must work to get along doing what they don't like but do it.

Many people have jobs they do love.  They earned them by taking the needed steps to advance in their field.  They did it through making early sacrifices in order to achieve their goals.  They didn't do it by the government forcing others to pay their way.  To assume that strangers should take on financial and social burdens for you (and I use that pronoun generally) to live for free while "exploring your art" is at best entitled and at worst childish.

There's lot of jobs no one wants to do that cannot be replaced with technology.  Toilets need scrubbed.  Shelves need stocking.  Irate customers must be appeased.  Agricultural animals need feeding, cleaning, slaughtering and artificially inseminated.  There will always be jobs that need done in order for society to function.  No one would be doing anyone any favors by allowing these duties to go undone.

Now, do we have a moral obligation to aid the working poor?  I say yes.  Do we as a society need to encourage and enable those with the ability to create art, invent, and educate themselves for careers in the fields they most desire to work in?  Again, I say yes.  There are social programs in the U.S. that address all those needs.  Are they adequate?  That's certainly a matter of discussion.  Should we trash our entire economic system?  Absolutely not.

[Noelle]

I'm not anti-work but anti-slavery work there is a difference. If one does something they either enjoy doing or do to get by makes a difference to me. If its the former its making money while having enjoyment some people may like inventing things and others cooking and others have other things they enjoy. I think also some people must work to get along doing what they don't like but do it. I just want to encourage the former and make the latter as painless as possible with no need to do it as much.

But my point is, why would you bother doing what you don't need to do if the government is providing you a means to live without having to do anything? Even working 16 hours a week doing anything is such a small amount that almost nothing would get done -- some people today have daily shifts that are nearly that long because there's just that much to do. 16 hours at my job as a graphic designer is two days of work and I'm the only artist on staff -- our business would shut down if I decided I didn't feel like working more than 16 hours at a time and because I work for a small business, they don't exactly have the money to hire on another person to work another 16 hours when I'm perfectly capable of doing it.

The problem with your plan is that it means well, but shows a pretty big lack of knowledge for business and economics. Only requiring 16 hours of work means you have to hire more people to make up for that -- and while more employed people is a good thing, small businesses are going to suffer big time because they don't have the budget to hire double the amount of people to do work that could be done by half their employees. It doesn't make sense.

A fundamental trade off is also you won't get everything handed to you if you don't work at all and can you still must provide things for yourself either they are not essentials (scented soap, toothpaste, deorderant etc.) or a luxury (television, cable, internet in the home, a car, college or education over the K-12 level) or money for retirement. And for the security of not having to worry so if you opt to go to college and become a doctor most of your money can go to that you will get your other needs mostly met while your going to school or you could save up and buy a home outright with no loans in a fair amount of time.

How are things like soap and toothpaste non-essential (I leave out deodorant because its function is pretty much purely aesthetic)? Personal hygiene is kind of a standard for a healthier society. I argue that cars are essential because mobility is a huge key to improving your socioeconomic status because it makes work more accessible to you, especially if you live in a suburban or rural area. Public transit only goes so far -- Tumbleweeds, Montana isn't about to implement a metro system, so what of them? How are you supposed to get a job if you don't have a means of transportation?

And college is a luxury now? I can't follow your logic at all. You want to make it free, except for people who don't work -- but people aren't obligated to work so they can chase their dream. So if their dream is college and they don't work -- ???? Besides, I'm not sure if you're aware as to what it's like to be a college student, but I was unemployed most of the time because I didn't have time for a job during the school year, certainly not my final year because of all the senior projects I had for two different majors.

This is the big issue I have with your plan -- there are so many holes and places that are unaccounted for or just simply don't mesh with reality that it's not as easy as giving everyone the same thing and telling them to chase their dreams. You're adding footnotes to footnotes and they don't even make sense and aren't consistent with the rest of your policy.

You forget this would also end lots of horrible things homelessness, unemployment (if fewer people work a business must then hire more people), drudgery, offer more free time to be happy all these are good plus a less stressed person makes for a better worker.

Homelessness, sure. I can get on board with that. Unemployment? Hardly, as was demonstrated by my point about hiring double the workers for half the work -- why not hire workers who promise to work 40 hours a week and kick the 16-hour pansies to the curb? Besides, you have to encourage job creation, which isn't really done when the tax rate is 50% for anyone who does work.

I agree that happier people make better, more productive workers, but I don't see A) How our present system is even remotely comparable to slavery in general and B) why we have to completely scrap everything and enter a nationwide nanny state to accomplish this.

[Asuras]

I'm not entirely sure it follows that people would be so lazy as to force the tax to become onerous.

It's not that the tax is onerous, it's really about the programs we're discussing. Giving people an unconditioned right to basic free housing, food, utilities, etc.

I think about a lot of people I know, ranging from kids in middle class families with parents that support them years after they should have gone to college and started their lives, up to trust fund fuckers with more money than they know what to do with. They're all slackers for lack of a better word; many of them are quite talented, but they never feel like they need to go into the real world and get an actual, productive job. The reason is that they have all these things provided for them, and they're happy with that, so they don't pursue any more. If I understand the present argument, we're talking about providing that for everyone. Maybe the trust fund babies won't be interested in just basic housing and a free cell phone, but a lot of lower income and middle income people would be complacent with that.

To be clear, I'm absolutely for providing support to people who need it - and even more than we currently provide - but I think it should be conditioned on trying to find a job and develop skills.

Hell the entire housing depression is caused by, in part, our physical capacity to produce far, far more than we need.

I absolutely agree that we have a tremendous physical capacity to produce a huge amount of stuff, my contention is whether we can capture that capacity under this program.

One piece of the housing boom was an investment spree. This doesn't really affect that, although it's worth noting that it wasn't a purely creative force, but the profit motive.

The second is that it was possible because construction labor is cheap. This program would basically provide a minimum wage (and probably more) for nothing, so...why would someone work as a carpenter for minimum wage in the grueling Texas sun for 8 hours a day when he can get that for free?

And getting the most out of creative people involves making them -not worry- about money. It turns out that paying too much actually makes them less productive.

The first point...I'm skeptical. I know a lot of programmers who don't have to worry about money (mainly the slackers I mentioned above) and they dabble in open source this, dot-com that...but somehow they don't seem to really achieve much. There are rare exceptions (none that I know personally). On the other hand, the programmers I know at Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Accenture - these guys seem to be accomplishing things. Money isn't the first thing on their mind, but they care about it. Somehow that focuses their incentives.

[RubySlippers]

Personal hygiene items are not essentenial you need clothes, food, shelter and medical care. Most people need at least a high school diploma so we have public education. But you are free to stink being a filthy person is still not going to kill you on its own. I'm just saying if you don't need it to live you don't get it and this includes most technology items even a phone.

And your assuming I'm for a consumer society in this I'm not. Rather one that meets our internal needs and wants if we need to feed people we just need enough food production to do that plus some extra. If we need to have so many shirts produce that many shirts. The extra goods above that would be done as the free market funding permits it you might have cars sold but maybe just make alot fewer cars in the long run. In short its what Marx would have idealized everyone provided for but with some free markert mechanisms so people get some luxuries to. But people would likely work less since my view is take the obligations for the very basics away then it leaves people free to produce in our society just enough to meet our needs and then again allow extras in the private market.

Its again a trade off you would have more free time and less worry, in return you would get less stuff and likely have to decide if that fancy new widget is worth it or not.

As for the example of the hate monger sitting on his bum and promoting hate speech, fine, he would have to work to get a computer and internet and pay for the web site and whatever else he wants to. If he gets paid being a hate site operator he is working take half the income and its fine by me. Same for a person who might write poetry and post it collecting donations they are working so the same thing. I don't care how much they make enough people would want to work to by things they wanted over the basics it should all work out. If they made $2000 a year thety pay half and the rest is theirs its fine by me. Most of you sound as if you would want to work alot more than that your just demonstrating the fundamental wants system is still good to go and most will work at least part-time and likely more.

[Jude]

Personal hygiene items are not essentenial you need clothes, food, shelter and medical care. Most people need at least a high school diploma so we have public education. But you are free to stink being a filthy person is still not going to kill you on its own. I'm just saying if you don't need it to live you don't get it and this includes most technology items even a phone.

Not having a high school diploma isn't going to kill you either, but you're going to have a hard time getting a job without it, and the same is true of deoderant.  By the way, it makes no fiscal sense to cover people's medical bills but not their toothpaste.

Most of you sound as if you would want to work alot more than that your just demonstrating the fundamental wants system is still good to go and most will work at least part-time and likely more.

In your system I would quit working immediately, because I'd have to work harder to reach the same heights I can reach now.  I struggle now to get by providing for myself and paying off my student loans -- why not just default on them if everything is going to be provided for me?  I have video game systems and you're giving me food and access to a house and electricity, right now I'm a tenant... So I'll just take awhile off to play until I've finished everything I own.  Then I'll get another job long enough to by up some more games to play and quit again.  Or better yet, get a nice computer and pirate everything.  Actually, I'd leave the country and move somewhere with a lower tax rate.  I don't have to remain part of any nation that's basically requiring me, by law, to support people who don't want to live the same 40 hour-work-week lifestyle that I do.  It's that simple.

I have a question for you though Ruby.  Forget everyone's criticisms, I want to know why you think this change would make the world a better place.  What is the great injustice of our current system you believe your welfare state would correct?

[Oniya]

Personal hygiene items are not essentenial you need clothes, food, shelter and medical care. Most people need at least a high school diploma so we have public education. But you are free to stink being a filthy person is still not going to kill you on its own.

Um - wrong.  Poor dental hygiene can result in infections of the mouth that can then get into the bloodstream, causing sepsis, leading to shock and organ failure.  Not washing can result in the spread of infections from E. coli (and other digestive tract infections) to MRSA (and other skin infections), any of which can kill, or at the very least, will put an extra burden on your free medical services.

[Noelle]

Personal hygiene items are not essentenial you need clothes, food, shelter and medical care. Most people need at least a high school diploma so we have public education. But you are free to stink being a filthy person is still not going to kill you on its own. I'm just saying if you don't need it to live you don't get it and this includes most technology items even a phone.

Wrong you are on this one. Personal hygiene prevents the spread of disease, which healthy, clean people can then contract because there's a bunch of Pigpens running around. Your lack of personal hygiene isn't just your problem. People who don't brush their teeth get cavities and periodontal diseases, amongst other things -- and you already said you're willing to cover their medical expenses, so maybe you could explain to me how it makes sense to pay for a $1000 root canal, but not $2 on toothpaste. Your priorities make no sense and pretending they do doesn't change that.

And your assuming I'm for a consumer society in this I'm not. Rather one that meets our internal needs and wants if we need to feed people we just need enough food production to do that plus some extra. If we need to have so many shirts produce that many shirts. The extra goods above that would be done as the free market funding permits it you might have cars sold but maybe just make alot fewer cars in the long run. In short its what Marx would have idealized everyone provided for but with some free markert mechanisms so people get some luxuries to. But people would likely work less since my view is take the obligations for the very basics away then it leaves people free to produce in our society just enough to meet our needs and then again allow extras in the private market.

Your system is broken, then. Your system relies on people working, but doesn't want to provide adequate work. It's broken when it says people only have to work 16 hours a week, but then devalues its own laborers (a blatant no-no in Marxism, as you should know) by essentially making them compete to see who will work more since smart companies are not going to hire two part-time laborers when they have one person willing to work more hours than both of them combined. It's broken because those workers willing to work 40 hours rather than just 16 then have a monopoly on the limited cap on work available you just imposed with this rule. You broke your own system. Insisting that Marxism will work over and over when we continually prove that it's broken is just willful ignorance and frankly makes for a disrespectful debate.

Its again a trade off you would have more free time and less worry, in return you would get less stuff and likely have to decide if that fancy new widget is worth it or not.

Who gets more free time and less worry? Not everybody can, Ruby, and I’ve demonstrated this in past posts.

As for the example of the hate monger sitting on his bum and promoting hate speech, fine, he would have to work to get a computer and internet and pay for the web site and whatever else he wants to.

Hypocrisy. Either everyone can follow their dream or not everybody can. Your basic system says that nobody should have to worry about doing a lot of work and that everyone should be able to follow their dream and be provided for, and yet you’re still promoting a broken system. What if he needs a computer to start up that job? What if he needs internet and other resources provided to him because that’s the job he wants to work? He’d be like the Westboro Baptist Church, only worse, because under your system, the government would be either be obligated to fund his new business so he could work, or you would basically be telling him to not follow his dream and get another job so he can do what he wants on the side – which is basically what you have to do now, and is what you so eloquently call “slavery”.

Most of you sound as if you would want to work alot more than that your just demonstrating the fundamental wants system is still good to go and most will work at least part-time and likely more.

Except you’re missing the part where your work horses (and that’s exactly how this system treats working people, like oxen to pull the welfare sled) are actively complaining to you in this thread about how they would blatantly not want to live under this system – and forcing them to do so would be true slavery, meaning your cash cows are probably going to skip town and leave dead weight to fail on their own accord. I’m sure as hell not going to stick around in a place like this, so the only question that remains is what are you going to do when all the working people move to a place where they can get ahead faster and where there is an actual incentive to work and innovate?

[Zakharra]

  This system rewards laziness and gives hardly any incentive for people to achieve or excel at anything. It would also stifle research since there is little reason for people or companies to do it. Why would most people work when most of your basic needs are already met and if you do work, you lose half your pay if not more (assuming the 50% tax is for all taxes and not just the Federal bite. If it's Federal, then the states and local governments will take even more)?

[Star Safyre]

I wonder when Tax Freedom Day would fall under this system.  Given the highly likely drop in the number of workers, the likelihood of gross inflation, and much higher demand for government spending, I'd guess August or perhaps as late as November.

[Vekseid]

It's not that the tax is onerous, it's really about the programs we're discussing. Giving people an unconditioned right to basic free housing, food, utilities, etc.

Well, as I've said repeatedly, there are countless reasons to avoid giving people free housing.

And I'm not claiming that Ruby's idea is the best, just that the capacity is certainly there to provide it.

I think about a lot of people I know, ranging from kids in middle class families with parents that support them years after they should have gone to college and started their lives, up to trust fund fuckers with more money than they know what to do with. They're all slackers for lack of a better word; many of them are quite talented, but they never feel like they need to go into the real world and get an actual, productive job. The reason is that they have all these things provided for them, and they're happy with that, so they don't pursue any more. If I understand the present argument, we're talking about providing that for everyone. Maybe the trust fund babies won't be interested in just basic housing and a free cell phone, but a lot of lower income and middle income people would be complacent with that.

This actually isn't new, nor is it the first time this has happened. One of the drivers of the Prohibition movement during the Long Depression was when the head of household couldn't find work, he'd drink himself into a stupor and wreck his family. Again during the Great Depression. There's more to it than simple innate laziness, there are a lot of social similarities between America's liquidity shortages.

I absolutely agree that we have a tremendous physical capacity to produce a huge amount of stuff, my contention is whether we can capture that capacity under this program.

I think the most straightforward method is to provide a Works Progress Administration, and require some minimum level of labor in order to receive benefits, or otherwise paying taxes at a certain level (not necessarily a 30% flat tax but maybe say 40% past a given point, and you have to reach that point to get the benefits unless you can prove disability). If a sixth of our population is currently underutilized, that means we could probably get ~5-10 years out of rebuilding and upgrading our infrastructure. Maybe a bit longer since that would solve the demand problem.

I still wouldn't provide 'free' housing in such a situation because ownership is really important.

The first point...I'm skeptical. I know a lot of programmers who don't have to worry about money (mainly the slackers I mentioned above) and they dabble in open source this, dot-com that...but somehow they don't seem to really achieve much. There are rare exceptions (none that I know personally). On the other hand, the programmers I know at Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Accenture - these guys seem to be accomplishing things. Money isn't the first thing on their mind, but they care about it. Somehow that focuses their incentives.

I'd need to find the video that picks out the study, but it suggested that past a certain point, giving creative workers more money actually reduced their effectiveness. It left the value rather vague (and of course it's going to differ from place to place), but as a counterexample of what too much money can do to a group I'll throw out 3D Realms.

Or maybe it's sortof the same point - a person needs to worry about actually producing.

[Jude]

I'm curious to see this study.  The only such effect that I'm aware of that's well documented is bonuses reducing productivity instead of boosting it.  The reason for that effect though is that people are preoccupied with an out-of-the-norm pay schedule, not because being paid more innately results in decreased productivity.

Citing 3D Realms as support isn't very convincing given that you'd have to establish that their decrease in productivity was due to increased prosperity (impossible to do really, and even if you focus on Duke Nukem Forever solely it's probably not even true given all of the engine switches they went through -- they had a whole bunch of those forced on them due to running out of licensing) and even if it was that would only be one instance of anecdotal evidence (and thus would prove absolutely nothing).  They put out Prey in 2006 to rave reviews in cooperation with another studio, so I don't really see how you can put forth an argument that the quality of their work dropped.  It was basically their game and the external studio only did the finishing touches on development, plus that was their last title.

Even if you can dig up a singular study to back it up, that's no guarantee that it's solid science.  But I am curious to see what you can find.  I can see how the effect might be plausible in some situations.  If you make so much money that you no longer need to continue making more to survive then you may not be very motivated to work hard.  Of course this is the same reason why the system wouldn't work to begin with since it takes away the need to make money to survive to begin with...

[Asuras]

This actually isn't new, nor is it the first time this has happened. One of the drivers of the Prohibition movement during the Long Depression was when the head of household couldn't find work, he'd drink himself into a stupor and wreck his family. Again during the Great Depression. There's more to it than simple innate laziness, there are a lot of social similarities between America's liquidity shortages.

I don't think that laziness is a consequence of recession/depression/liquidity crisis...it's a part of the human condition. And it's even rational.

I think the most straightforward method is to provide a Works Progress Administration, and require some minimum level of labor in order to receive benefits, or otherwise paying taxes at a certain level (not necessarily a 30% flat tax but maybe say 40% past a given point, and you have to reach that point to get the benefits unless you can prove disability).

So in principle we agree that welfare should be conditioned on work - and it in the US at least, it is. I would prefer getting people in private sector jobs, but in this economy a WPA-style program would be wise at least as an interim measure until the employment situation improves.

I'd need to find the video that picks out the study, but it suggested that past a certain point, giving creative workers more money actually reduced their effectiveness. It left the value rather vague (and of course it's going to differ from place to place), but as a counterexample of what too much money can do to a group I'll throw out 3D Realms.

I'd be interested in seeing the study and I don't know what 3D Realms is.

[Vekseid]

I don't think that laziness is a consequence of recession/depression/liquidity crisis...it's a part of the human condition. And it's even rational.

I think it has more to do with - a lot of people are pretty aimless, in general, and jobs 'aim' them. If they don't feel they have a chance of finding decent work, for the most part they aren't creative and/or motivated enough to find their own direction.

So in principle we agree that welfare should be conditioned on work - and it in the US at least, it is. I would prefer getting people in private sector jobs, but in this economy a WPA-style program would be wise at least as an interim measure until the employment situation improves.

It's actually conditioned against work in many states. Or at least, it's conditioned against doing your best if you are at all competent. Which is part of the problem - our 'best' labor - the hardest working - gets treated the worst.

I'm a fan of the idea that central planning can take over during market collapses. A moderate degree of inefficiency is better than letting skill pools rot like we are now.

I'd be interested in seeing the study and I don't know what 3D Realms is.

Actually there are several studies, Dan Pink goes over and names them in this Ted Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

3D Realms was producing Duke Nukem Forever. One of the cited reasons it failed was that George Broussard simply had too much money and no actual need to produce.

[Zakharra]

I'm a fan of the idea that central planning can take over during market collapses. A moderate degree of inefficiency is better than letting skill pools rot like we are now.

Part of the problem is when the economy does recover, central planning would not release it. It would keep control in order to 'manage' it for everyone. And end up making matters worse.

[Vekseid]

Part of the problem is when the economy does recover, central planning would not release it. It would keep control in order to 'manage' it for everyone. And end up making matters worse.

Because the Internet never existed and World War II was a magic fantasy?

Hell, after World War II, the government wound down too fast, and there was a short recession.

Your statement is purely, simply, factually wrong. Lack of transparency and lack of accountability cause those problems and more. But this is true both in central planning and in 'market' solutions - accountability and transparency are vital, always. 

[Zakharra]

Because the Internet never existed and World War II was a magic fantasy?

Hell, after World War II, the government wound down too fast, and there was a short recession.

Your statement is purely, simply, factually wrong. Lack of transparency and lack of accountability cause those problems and more. But this is true both in central planning and in 'market' solutions - accountability and transparency are vital, always.

That's BS and you know it.  If the government comes to control the economy in a recession/depression, do you really think it would ever give up control? Hell no. Once the government gets control of something, it very rarely gives up control over it.  It takes an act of Congress for that to change. You have idiots in the government now that think they know how to run the economy better than anyone else.

  The biggest problem is that the government doesn't have to make ANY profit. It never makes a profit and is fairly inefficient. Where do they get their money? Taxes. If it goes into debt? No problem, raise the debt limit and either print more money and/or borrow it.

Transparency is important, but given the current government in the last 50 years, it hasn't helped. Especially when damned near every politician is in bed with special interests and the bureaucracies help cover as many mistakes as they can.  The Democrats are just as bad, if not worse in some ways than the Republicans with that.

[Vekseid]

That's BS and you know it.

Are you claiming that the Internet was not originally a government program? Are you claiming that World War II was not government-driven?

If the government comes to control the economy in a recession/depression, do you really think it would ever give up control?

Why is there no Works Progress Administration today, then? Do you think it just upped and magically vanished on its own?

Hell no. Once the government gets control of something, it very rarely gives up control over it.

I have given examples. You have refused to.

Either address my examples, provide examples of your own, or concede the point.

When the Fed takes over a bank, is it nationalized or are the branches sold out and merged into other organizations?

Hell, a part of the problem is the amount of privatization of public resources that Republicans have been encouraging, up to and including the use of mercenaries in wartime.

It takes an act of Congress for that to change. You have idiots in the government now that think they know how to run the economy better than anyone else.

Then stop voting in idiots. That, in theory, should not be too much to ask.

  The biggest problem is that the government doesn't have to make ANY profit. It never makes a profit and is fairly inefficient.

The government has to produce a net positive gain in overall resources in order to be considered stable. That's about as raw a definition of profit as you can get.

Central planning is only inefficient for traditional classes of goods - things where a large number of sellers and a large number of buyers are feasible.

But central planning is not the same concept as government controls. Government controls can also help to ensure things like transparency in a market, which is a requirement for the market hypothesis to hold.

Even more so, why are you objecting to a new WPA on the grounds that the Government won't let go of it when in fact that is exactly what happened?

Where do they get their money? Taxes.

The Government has several significant sources of revenue
1) Taxes, yes
2) Tariffs,
3) Fines and fees
4) Printing money
5) Acting as a central bank - making loans and collecting interest on them.

Most of the Fed's taxes are payroll taxes - going to social security and medicaid. But the last four aren't insignificant.

If it goes into debt? No problem, raise the debt limit and either print more money and/or borrow it.

This is not an unlimited source of funds. The amount of money the Government can borrow is limited by its own reserves (the amount it basically has saved up for other purposes - e.g. the Treasury, the Social Security and other trust funds, etc - money the Government owes itself), and the amount other people are willing to lend to it - which is a lot, given that interest rates are so low - people want to lend to the government.

The amount of money the government can print without causing hyperinflation is also limited, though there is a more complex dynamic here.

Transparency is important, but given the current government in the last 50 years, it hasn't helped. Especially when damned near every politician is in bed with special interests and the bureaucracies help cover as many mistakes as they can.  The Democrats are just as bad, if not worse in some ways than the Republicans with that.

What's going on seems almost conspiratorially intentional - the Republicans are playing crazy and the Democrats are playing spineless while we literally get sold out.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup each got two trillion in cheap, no-recourse loans and Democrats had to fight the Obama administration over getting that information out of the Fed. If you want change, I suspect it is going to have to come at the expense of this 'Democrat versus Republican' nonsense and actually focus on electing Democrats and Republicans who swear to a policy of transparency and accountability. That probably won't get very far without a few Constitutional amendments first.

[Jude]

We may be on the same side of this issue, but there are some serious factual inaccuracies in what you're saying.

That's BS and you know it.  If the government comes to control the economy in a recession/depression, do you really think it would ever give up control? Hell no.

There are already many ways in which this has occurred just recently on a smaller scale.  Remember all of that deregulation of banks that happened in the late 90s?  Even more recently:  GM is in the process of going public again.  If it hasn't happened already, it will soon -- I'm not entirely up to date on the news here, but I remember a few months ago financial analysts were forecasting their IPO being a very big number.

Once the government gets control of something, it very rarely gives up control over it.  It takes an act of Congress for that to change. You have idiots in the government now that think they know how to run the economy better than anyone else.

Again, really not the case historically.  Did you know that before the FED there were 2 attempts at creating a central bank exercised economic authority, and that their charters were allowed to expire?  The first and second bank of the United States.

Lets also not forget the detention camps during WW2 for "potential Chinese sympathizers."  There was the Works Progress Administration, and every single amendment to the constitution to protect people's rights (because every time something is specifically enumerated that the government can't do, they lose power).  And those are just the big ones.

The problem with your outlook is that you're anthropomorphizing government.  Government doesn't always do anything because government is not one person.  It's not one philosophy.  It's not one organization.  Government is a very complicated alliance of individuals with different perspectives, moral character, and objectives.  Government is not one unified entity.

There is a whole branch of the government that is dedicated to, in a very large part, limiting the power of the entire government.  The Judicial Branch regularly tells local, state, and federal entities that they cannot enact or enforce certain laws because they do not have the power to do so.  This idea of the government as one monolithic power-consolidating and usurping entity is outright Republican fantasy straight from the mind of Hollywood Actor turned Deregulator in Chief (or more recently a Mama Grizzly with aspirations of following in his footsteps).

We live in Democratic Republic founded on the principle of Separation of Powers.  So long as this is the case, every branch has some control over the absolute level of authority our government wields.  This is why I have no idea why you seem to think that only congress can do it, when it's basically the Supreme Court's job to do that on a daily basis.  And even the Executive Branch has some ability to keep the government in check.

[Zakharra]

Are you claiming that the Internet was not originally a government program? Are you claiming that World War II was not government-driven?

I am not saying that. I know it was developed by the military. From there the civilian market took it and ran with it.

Why is there no Works Progress Administration today, then? Do you think it just upped and magically vanished on its own?

You have a poin there. Back then they did eliminate it.  In today's political enviroment? I highly doubt it would be  allowed to just 'go away'.

I have given examples. You have refused to.

Either address my examples, provide examples of your own, or concede the point.

EPA, Social Security, Welfare for starters. They are large and are in trouble. Yet there is little effort being done to fix them. Especially SS. The cost of those programs keeps on rising higher and higher. I know part of it is bureacracy. It rarely wants to do with less.

Then stop voting in idiots. That, in theory, should not be too much to ask.

Agreed. For both Democrats and Republicans.

The government has to produce a net positive gain in overall resources in order to be considered stable. That's about as raw a definition of profit as you can get.

Then why is it always asking for more money? Why are they wanting to raise the Debt ceiling again? It's at abobut $14 trillion right now and they want to raise it higher?

Central planning is only inefficient for traditional classes of goods - things where a large number of sellers and a large number of buyers are feasible.

But central planning is not the same concept as government controls. Government controls can also help to ensure things like transparency in a market, which is a requirement for the market hypothesis to hold.

Even more so, why are you objecting to a new WPA on the grounds that the Government won't let go of it when in fact that is exactly what happened?

  If the government controls it, then it is government controlled central planning. 

Then, back THEN they were able to do that because of WWII. They needed men to fight and everyone and every factory was busy in the war effort. After the war was over, there was no need for those factories to be pumping out hundreds and thousands of tanks, planes, ships, guns and stuff for the military. Plus the armed forces were downsized. Then the men came home so of course there was a bit of a slump. Which vanished  afterward with no need for any WPA.

The Government has several significant sources of revenue
1) Taxes, yes
2) Tariffs,
3) Fines and fees
4) Printing money
5) Acting as a central bank - making loans and collecting interest on them.

Most of the Fed's taxes are payroll taxes - going to social security and medicaid. But the last four aren't insignificant.

This is not an unlimited source of funds. The amount of money the Government can borrow is limited by its own reserves (the amount it basically has saved up for other purposes - e.g. the Treasury, the Social Security and other trust funds, etc - money the Government owes itself), and the amount other people are willing to lend to it - which is a lot, given that interest rates are so low - people want to lend to the government.

The amount of money the government can print without causing hyperinflation is also limited, though there is a more complex dynamic here.

They are ascting like it is unlimited. They're wanting to raise the debt limit again to borrow more money. At some point who is going to lend to us? How much is too much?

What's going on seems almost conspiratorially intentional - the Republicans are playing crazy and the Democrats are playing spineless while we literally get sold out.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup each got two trillion in cheap, no-recourse loans and Democrats had to fight the Obama administration over getting that information out of the Fed. If you want change, I suspect it is going to have to come at the expense of this 'Democrat versus Republican' nonsense and actually focus on electing Democrats and Republicans who swear to a policy of transparency and accountability. That probably won't get very far without a few Constitutional amendments first.

This I will agree with. The government officials have been doing some stupid things. Especially in the last 4 years. It's like they do not care if they are caught and are somehow surprized when they are. This is a reasons I would prefer term limits for both Houses of Congress. Two terms for the Senate and six for the House.

[Jude]

All of the examples you gave of things that started up and didn't go away did not go away because there isn't the political will in the populace to get rid of them.  We still believe, on the whole, that Social Security, the EPA, and Welfare are a positive part of our government.  In order for the government to be responsible for their preservation as in your claim, the public would have to be against those things.  Only powers that "government" has kept against the will of the public really fit the claim you're making.

[consortium11]

... and every single amendment to the constitution to protect people's rights (because every time something is specifically enumerated that the government can't do, they lose power).

Off topic warning.

There's actually a bit of constitutional debate about this: is it the case that the State can do everything not prohibited by the/a constitution or is it the case that it can only do what is allowed by the constitution?

The first interpretation is the one that has occurred in reality on the whole but the debate still exists.

[Vekseid]

I am not saying that. I know it was developed by the military. From there the civilian market took it and ran with it.

Do you object to the loose government oversight of DNS and IP assignment, then?

You have a poin there. Back then they did eliminate it.  In today's political enviroment? I highly doubt it would be  allowed to just 'go away'.

Ultimately, a new WPA would be primarily focused on building infrastructure. There's only so much of that that needs to be done, or can be done for economic benefit - enough to occupy the underutilized labor for several years, at best. It would be a program designed to end, and only start up again when needed.

EPA, Social Security, Welfare for starters. They are large and are in trouble. Yet there is little effort being done to fix them. Especially SS. The cost of those programs keeps on rising higher and higher. I know part of it is bureacracy. It rarely wants to do with less.

Social Security and Welfare are benefits programs, not control. Welfare programs are getting harder to get on (part of my argument in this thread - you can't get them if you work much), and their costs are the easiest to chop. Social Security, on the converse, is a guaranteed, low-risk savings program with little actual bureaucratic overhead - on the order of 1%. The same story for Medicare - a 3% overhead. This is because in this case the government is providing a non-traditional good - the good in this case, insurance, works best when it covers as many people as possible (and would work even better with actual cost control measures in the case of Medicare).

The purpose of the EPA is to prevent externalities. Do you want to go back to drinking pre-Clean Water Act water? Do you think that got passed on a lark?

Preventing externalities and fraud is within the Government's purview, even within valid libertarian thought.


Then why is it always asking for more money? Why are they wanting to raise the Debt ceiling again? It's at abobut $14 trillion right now and they want to raise it higher?

  If the government controls it, then it is government controlled central planning. 

Central planning is where a central body controls expenditures. It's possible to place controls on a segment of an economy without actually dictating what people use.

Then, back THEN they were able to do that because of WWII. They needed men to fight and everyone and every factory was busy in the war effort. After the war was over, there was no need for those factories to be pumping out hundreds and thousands of tanks, planes, ships, guns and stuff for the military. Plus the armed forces were downsized. Then the men came home so of course there was a bit of a slump. Which vanished  afterward with no need for any WPA.

And what was World War II?

And it's not like the tiny slump was any thing Americans could rightly whine about - World War II was the greatest economic boom of the century, and entirely Government driven.

They are ascting like it is unlimited. They're wanting to raise the debt limit again to borrow more money. At some point who is going to lend to us? How much is too much?

If other countries are any indication, at least $15 trillion more. Technically, this is only because the private sector is not actually interested in investing at the moment, so they want the US Government to. If the private sector was investing, however, there would be less of a need for the Government to pick up the slack.

Obviously, our current situation is not ideal, but nearly all of our wasted money comes from military spending and overinflated health care costs (which affects far more than just the private sector). Tax loopholes (including Bush's tax cuts) also inhibit revenue. Without these factors we could easily turn a surplus and start paying down the debt again.

This I will agree with. The government officials have been doing some stupid things. Especially in the last 4 years. It's like they do not care if they are caught and are somehow surprized when they are. This is a reasons I would prefer term limits for both Houses of Congress. Two terms for the Senate and six for the House.

Why six for the House?

Part of the problem is our House is very preoccupied with short term thinking. They should get four-year terms, first.

[Oniya]

I think the term limits suggested were calculated to give any individual Congressman 12 years max.  Two 6-year terms for the Senate, and six 2-year terms for the House.

[Asuras]

I think it has more to do with - a lot of people are pretty aimless, in general, and jobs 'aim' them. If they don't feel they have a chance of finding decent work, for the most part they aren't creative and/or motivated enough to find their own direction.

Valid, but I think even if everyone had jobs instantly available for them, there would still be this tendency. If you have 90% of what you want - housing, food, utilities, etc - given freely, is it worth working twice as much, twice as hard, to get the other 10%?

It's actually conditioned against work in many states. Or at least, it's conditioned against doing your best if you are at all competent. Which is part of the problem - our 'best' labor - the hardest working - gets treated the worst.

That may be, I'm not intimately familiar with state welfare laws. Could you provide examples?

3D Realms was producing Duke Nukem Forever. One of the cited reasons it failed was that George Broussard simply had too much money and no actual need to produce.

I'm guessing that Mr Broussard made a lot of money on previous ventures, enough to make him not care about making any more. The question is if he would have gone forward on those ventures in the first place if his earnings had been capped.

Then why is it always asking for more money? Why are they wanting to raise the Debt ceiling again? It's at abobut $14 trillion right now and they want to raise it higher?

If the debt ceiling is not raised before the budget is balanced, the US treasury will have to cut funding to everything - defense, social security, medicare, debt. It would be like declaring bankruptcy. It would be the greatest financial catastrophe ever. The Great Depression wouldn't hold a candle.

[Vekseid]

Valid, but I think even if everyone had jobs instantly available for them, there would still be this tendency. If you have 90% of what you want - housing, food, utilities, etc - given freely, is it worth working twice as much, twice as hard, to get the other 10%?

That's presuming that 90% of what you want is actually provided.

That may be, I'm not intimately familiar with state welfare laws. Could you provide examples?

The example I listed in this thread was - when I first got diagnosed with my hernia, getting state aid required that I made less than $9k per year, roughly, before any expenses due to self employment were taken out. $9k per year isn't even enough for rent in this city, pretty much anywhere.

That program got shut down last year (the limit then being a little over $10k per year), and in the interim a state subsidized program has basically replaced it (where you pay a few dollars a month for care) with much higher limits. The story is similar for subsidized housing and to a somewhat lesser degree, food stamps.

It's easier if you decide to pop out children, though you still run into the same problem.

I'm guessing that Mr Broussard made a lot of money on previous ventures, enough to make him not care about making any more. The question is if he would have gone forward on those ventures in the first place if his earnings had been capped.

Well, Apogee/3D Realms did. If I were to guess, I'd say that 3D Realms' current leadership was not the original reason they were so successful with their gaming lines (a few important developers left and it's hard to see just what they produced afterwards).

[OldSchoolGamer]

I would submit that America already has a welfare state--for the elite.  Once you get big and rich enough, the system practically guarantees you never fail.  You own the government.  If your company falls on hard times, you get a federal bailout.  Look at how the incomes of the top 2% are still growing and kept growing right through the recession.  Look at Big Health: the Republicans and even some Blue Dog Democrats won't even permit a discussion (at least in the halls of Congress) on the unsustainability of health insurers continuing to pocket 5 to 10+% more every year.  Now they want Medicare to be privatized so Big Health can skim more and more from seniors, too.  Insurance company CEOs take a haircut like everyone else?  HELL NO, WE WON'T GO, the GOP chants.

There are a handful of exceptions, but by and large conservatives seem to have absolutely no problem with a welfare state--as long as it caters to the top 2%. 

[Zakharra]

I think the term limits suggested were calculated to give any individual Congressman 12 years max.  Two 6-year terms for the Senate, and six 2-year terms for the House.

Exactly. So  a Congress man could have a total of 24 years serving inn the Legislative branch then they have to leave. Get some new blood in.

I'm not arguing well. It's frustrating because I know what I want to say but I cannot say it well.  *sigh*  Part of why I am untrusting oif the government to do the right thing is because I do not trust any politician now to do the right thing. I do not expect them to do what was done in the 1940s with the WPA. I think that they will take the idea and use it for their own ends, for political gains and a new WPA will become another effectively useless unending bureacracy.

The situation in WWII was a lot different than now. The culture was different, the entire country was engaged in a total world war. That is not happening today Veksied. That's a lot of the difference. Then pretty much -every- factory was involved in making war material. That's not happening now.

The Democrat politicians had a spine unlike today. Do you think a Democrat today would support dropping a nuke?  Back then we didn't whine (much) about 'what did we do to them to make them hate us?'  We just went and curb stomped them into the ground. Hard.

IO do admit the healthcare needs to be redone, but unl;ike what the Congress did, I think it needs to be comcpletely scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. Laying a new layer of bureacracy on the existing system will not help it be more efficient.

If other countries are any indication, at least $15 trillion more. Technically, this is only because the private sector is not actually interested in investing at the moment, so they want the US Government to. If the private sector was investing, however, there would be less of a need for the Government to pick up the slack.

Obviously, our current situation is not ideal, but nearly all of our wasted money comes from military spending and overinflated health care costs (which affects far more than just the private sector). Tax loopholes (including Bush's tax cuts) also inhibit revenue. Without these factors we could easily turn a surplus and start paying down the debt again.

Most of the governmental spending is in social programs, not the military. Social Security is going bankrupt unless something drastic is done. Welfare? I think that's going bankrupt too. There have been people on unemployment for what? Three years now? How long should those benifits last?

At what point do you stop spending because the hole you're digging is too damned deep? Raise the debt limit $15 trillion more you say? So a total debt limit of $29-30 trillion? How the hell is that EVER going to be paid off? By then we would be so far in the hole, the US would become owned by someone else, to who owns the debt.

[Oniya]

Exactly. So  a Congress man could have a total of 24 years serving inn the Legislative branch then they have to leave. Get some new blood in.

In theory, that's what the reasonably short term lengths were intended to do - keep the people and ideas in the Congress from getting stagnated.  I'm sure that the framers of those rules didn't anticipate 'career politicians', any more than they expected that a President would want to serve more than two terms.  I think the Senate was given a longer term than the House because there were fewer of them - another sort of balancing attempt - but I wouldn't be averse to something like 2 Senate terms of 6 years, and 3 House terms for 4 years with no 'switching' from House to Senate.  Twenty four years is almost a generation.

[Zakharra]

In theory, that's what the reasonably short term lengths were intended to do - keep the people and ideas in the Congress from getting stagnated.  I'm sure that the framers of those rules didn't anticipate 'career politicians', any more than they expected that a President would want to serve more than two terms.  I think the Senate was given a longer term than the House because there were fewer of them - another sort of balancing attempt - but I wouldn't be averse to something like 2 Senate terms of 6 years, and 3 House terms for 4 years with no 'switching' from House to Senate.  Twenty four years is almost a generation.

It would require a Constitutional Amendment to change the House term from 2 years to 4. That's unlikely to happen right now. I shudder to think of what else they'd try to slip in, in a Coinstitutional Convention.

[Vekseid]

Most of the governmental spending is in social programs, not the military. Social Security is going bankrupt unless something drastic is done. Welfare? I think that's going bankrupt too. There have been people on unemployment for what? Three years now? How long should those benifits last?

Or primary expenditures are
1) Social Security ($700 billion last year)
2) Health care (Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, etc) (~$800 billion last year)
3) Military (including the invasions) (~$700 billion last year)
- Plus interest payments of $200 billion. Last year's stimulus contribution was $400 billion. That leaves about $700 billion for everything else, much of which is listed as 'non-discretionary'.

Social security is easy to save. Either raise the income cap, extend the retirement age, or both. It's not like it's going 'bankrupt' altogether quickly, keep in mind that two and a half trillion of the debt is to the social security trust fund.

Putting in sane cost reduction procedures (and calling out chants of 'death panels' for the nonsense that they are) and implementing Universal health care could be done on a ~$1.2 trillion budget, judging by the cost of companies that self-insure their employees for about $4k per year. It could possibly be less. This would result in a cost savings for the overall economy, as insurance costs are best born by as many people as possibly (like national defense).

Honestly, I despise unemployment benefits. Maybe they should be allowed for 13 weeks or so, but I find the 99-week program to be nonsense. Past 13 weeks, they should have one of two options
1) They can get a federal grant to start their own business, provided they submit a business plan. This works really well in Germany.
2) They can join the Works Progress Administration, and maintain their skillset by helping to build public infrastructure.

Like unemployment, these would help alleviate liquidity crisises, but unlike employment, people are actually adding to the overall wealth of the nation while doing so.

At what point do you stop spending because the hole you're digging is too damned deep? Raise the debt limit $15 trillion more you say? So a total debt limit of $29-30 trillion? How the hell is that EVER going to be paid off? By then we would be so far in the hole, the US would become owned by someone else, to who owns the debt.

No.

You're forgetting that the United States actually owns its own currency. We're not Greece, or Ireland. We're more like Iceland or the United Kingdom. We undergo a period of currency devaluation so as to more easily pay the debt off, if we have to.

Alternately, we could solve it the way we solved it during and after World War II. Raise taxes. I don't see anyone claiming that the 50's were a time of marked impoverishment.