I understand the argument for it, but if everyone gets $500 a month for example, doesnt EVERYONE need to pay at least $500 in taxes each month to pay for it? If some dont pay that much, others have to pay more. It seems a bit like a perpetual motion machine.

If public safety and social order are valued as jointly-owned property, then regular insurance premiums to help maintain it might be theft in a very real sense, but the payoffs can significantly exceed the value of what gets taken.

In other words - cut all welfare, let everyone fend for themselves, and then there'll be massive escalations in crime.

I met a white Rhodesian once (escaped before Mugabe's takeover), and he had a few words to say about the extreme laissez-faire welfare-free environment of Rhodesia. Everyone with more than a couple of dimes to their name had to carry guns and live in constant fear of violence, burglary, rapes, carjackings, abuse. Is that what we want?

I agree Socialism doesn't work, anywhere. But how is is correct that they enslave professors? I get that they do it by giving free education but how do the professors go along with it?

It says the rich would pay theirs back in new taxes, so effectively they do not get the credit. It's basically a way of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, but not in the form of gov't programs but just a check. The credit would be phased out slowly, so there would be no accidental cliffs where if you earn more than a certain amount use lose access to some benefit program. This will not affect prices and is not fascism, at least no more so than taxing people and using the money for gov't programs is.
It's a more naked way of showing the gov't taking your money and handing it to someone else, easier to dial up and down than an aid agency.

"taking money from production to provide an income for the idle but when we reach a world where there simply isn't something productive for a significant portion of our population to do"
My hope is that market forces provide an incentive for people to use the new technologies in creative ways to create imagined value. My hope is that it's like someone saying the printing press would leave scribes with nothing to do.
I am not sure my hopes will come true. There's the chance that technology will increase the income gap partly by creating amazing new wealth for the few who can use the technology, e.g. top teachers who replace the need for as many local teachers, and people will respond prematurely with socialism.
I also think what Dr. Zarkov said could happen, where the technology creates a race of super robot who can think creatively as humans do. As he says, it's a whirlpool of possibilities at that point.

Sorry yes I do Thanks for catching that.

The future will be a confluence of technologies that result in an almost unimaginable variety of pathways. If, as some predict, AI entities reach what we would regard as sentience, we will have to deal with an alien civilization we created; bionics will reach such sophistication that replacement limbs and organs may enable near immortality; genetic engineering will create the opportunity for tailored human evolution. Where all of this is headed is such a whirlpool of possibilities that futurists have labeled it "the Singularity," when they believe the future becomes completely unpredictable (as though it ever truly was).

"The minimum wade stops exploitation, Or would you like to work for 30 cents an hour!"
Are you being sarcastic? Do you think the only reason most people get paid is b/c of the wage laws, not because they're providing something that someone else wants?

My very dear friend left Finland and emmigrated to the U.S., became a citizen and cut ties with socialism because as she says: "Socialism doesn't work."
She also added: "Actually the socialists did two things correctly: 1) They outlawed frivolous lawsuits and: 2) They enslaved the professors and made education free for as long as you want to peruse an education. OTHER THAN THAT, socialism doesn't work!"

Hello Thoritsu,
I believe Milton Friedman once proposed such a plan.
Regards,
O.A.

Hello dbhalling,
Er, umm.. Don't you mean Billion in place of Million on the dollar figures? In fiscal year 2015, military spending is projected to account for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion.That would mean approx. $100 billion left to run the rest of government.
Regards,
O.A.

You are making this sound almost good: I would get 10K, and a lot of spending that I do not want to have happen anyway gets eliminated. Can you make it de-fund the EPA too?

Jan, half joking

Using US figures, the US has about 318 Million people, and at $10k per person that works out to $3.18 Trillion dollars. The US federal budget this year is about $3.9 Trillion dollars, which would leave about $700 million left over. This means that this program would have to replace all Social Security and medicare payments. The states would also save money if medicare and medicaid were eliminated plus a host of other mandated programs. US Defense spending is just under $600 million. So you can make the math work, but it really has to replace all welfare - no emergency disaster aid, aid to farmers, no ethanol subsidies, no bailing out the banks, etc.

This is utter nonsense! Simplifying a welfare system is still a welfare system (in this case a direct wealth redistribution system) and a guaranteed income for every citizen is simply forcing producers to produce a portion of their goods/services for free. The guaranteed income the producer receives as an individual won't make up for the necessary decrease of the value of the money the producer receives, and then they're going to increase the tax rate on producers to get the producers' guaranteed income payment back.

Following this step, the producer will need to increase the wholesale price of his goods/services to keep his income where it was before this change and the gov't will have to stop him through price controls. But for the producers that have to buy out of country raw resources, the gov't can't fix those prices.

This is a guaranteed spiraling breakdown of the country's financial system. This worse than socialism--it's fascism.

cheaper with the payment across the board, but the poor
would still be in soup lines, etc. because of flaky spending. -- j
.

Who are you kidding! The minimum wade stops exploitation, Or would you like to work for 30 cents an hour!

Well, of course, they are going to take taxes out of it. I don't know their tax system but I bet it's progressive. It has the advantage of being low overhead so there are some savings there and if people on the stipend take part time work to augment the basic stipend they will pay taxes (a small amount I'm sure) on that.

It could, at least theoretically, be revenue neutral but it will probably cost more. There is a philosophical advantage to it being a universal stipend to it being something you have to declare yourself incapable of taking care of yourself to get.

Of course the whole idea of taking money from productive people and giving it to non-productive one is not the kind of thing that Objectivists are likely to be happy with. I would like it less if I hadn't been thinking about how we deal with a future in which all the goods we need can be made by only a fraction of the workforce.

I see it as an incentive for the producers of Finland to move to another country. Then who will pay for such a behemoth program?

And then what happens year after year? Vote higher basic wage that then hurts company creation. Government spending no mater the form crowds out private investment. My forebears left Finland over 100 years ago for good reason. Anyone remember Nokia???

that sounds logical, but somehow it cant work because everyone would get the basic stipend, and who pays for it? If you get $500 a month, you would have to pay $500 per month in taxes just to cover what you got....

Is it ideal? Nope. But is it practical and better than what they have? Yep.

Ha-ha. People will claim it's not enough, and then
it will just go up, and up. Still, with the elimination
of red tape, it might go a little better for a while. But then some people will complain that people are
misusing the money and squandering it on pleasures, and trying to run back for more when
it runs out, and others will want investigations,
and then they'll get more and more red tape a-
gain; that's what I think will happen.

There is logic behind that. If you are on a welfare system which provides a certain amount of income if you remain unemployed, the salary you get from taking a job must significantly exceed the benefits that you are going to lose. For low skilled people this can be a pretty big amount. By making it a rate you get (and pay taxes on) no matter the income than any low wage job you get is extra, so you have incentive to take a minimum wage job to better yourself.

In order to agree or disagree with you, I would have to know 'how much Finland is currently giving out on welfare' plus 'how much the bureaucratic overhead of staffing the welfare department costs'. If they are already spending more money than that for their current welfare program, then this could represent a net savings.

It is philosophically odious, however. And...a bit amusing.

Jan

Pretty crazy actually. How can people be so STUPID as to think that giving free money will encourage people to work. It certainly wouldnt make ME work more.