money as a concept is flawed. it is a "debt system" so why not just everyone take objects they need or want for free?
Reviews for "Why Basic Income?"
adamanimates responds:
It's already happening with digital goods. When 3D printing gets better, it will start happening with physical goods too.
I think that as long as there's scarcity though, money systems prevent fights over resources. Lots of better ways to implement them though.
Decent animation and nice production quality. Fundamentally flawed premise: If everyone is riding in the wagon, who is going to pull the wagon?
1.You say that automation will destroy jobs, then later claim it will help people be more entrepreneurial. What?
2. Also flawed reasoning: the incentive is stripped from the would-be-entrepreneur. Why work when he can have things handed to him? Also, why bother becoming wealthy when his wealth will be taken from him? You are dooming the creative thinker to a life of mediocrity.
Nothing about nature is "equal"; you can't defy the laws of reality. All redistributive economics either fail (see Venezuela) or are currently riding off the success of capitalist countries (see Iceland).
adamanimates responds:
1. It sounds like a contradiction when put like that, but both things are true. My point is that people aren't lazier when you give them money. You were told that by the rich so they wouldn't have their taxes go up. There still will be jobs for a long time to come, and we need innovation and the basis for people to build on their ideas. One example of what I mean by entrepreneurial is that in the study in India, some people from poor villages were able to buy fishing gear and thus have a way to support themselves when they couldn't before.
Automation is also absolutely destroying jobs at the same time. All the repetitive, systematic stuff is getting automated as fast as it can. Maybe In the super long term, even that fisherman in India won't have a job because some machine catches the fish and sells them cheaper than he can afford to live on. What would you suggest then? I'd say that a portion of the massive gain in productivity should go to keeping people alive. In the case if everyone is riding in the wagon, robots are pulling the wagon. Until we get to that point, most of us pull with increasing help from machines.
2. Would you stop working after earning $12,000 in a year? That's the most common number thrown around for Basic Income. It could start lower than that, as it already does in the current system working in Alaska (about $2000). The work disincentive is a fiction. There's a lot of evidence about this, and it's all in the links up there. Basic Income is designed to avoid the current welfare trap, which is when people earn more by staying home instead of working. Once they start a job, a big chuck of their benefits disappear and it's not worth it. Basic income gradually tapers off the benefits until you make a middle-class salary, so there's no reason to not try and better your situation.
As for your ideas about redistributive economics, they are grounded in ideology and probably can't be changed by anything I type. But hey, I'll give it a shot. I think for Venezuela you have the cause and effect backwards. Venezuela's social programs are mostly funded by oil money, which accounts for 95% of exports. So what happens when oil prices go down? I don't see how it's the fault of the average Venezuelan for what the Saudis are doing with oil prices.
You're using the old arguments against communism, but Basic Income is a pretty capitalist idea. It was supported by who I imagine is one of your heroes, Milton Friedman. He wanted a way to simplify the massive bureaucracy of the welfare system. Turns out Basic Income is a more efficient way to do that. It almost was implemented in the States in 1970, but Democrats blocked it.
A nicely done animation, to say the least. The audio, visual appeal, the style, everything is nice.
As for the narrative, I also do support the notion of Basic Income, despite being against globalization and communism, of all things. (I do understand there's not much connection, but the real question is - does anyone else?)
Anyhoe, I've noticed how people in the comment section are worried about the fact that less workers means less taxes, which means less finances that could be allocated for the program, while your sources would state that there wouldn't be such a drastic decrease in workers.
If there's one way of increasing the chances of Basic Income to become reality, that pops into my mind, is to incorporate some sort of a Robot Tax. Human workers are taxed, as a part of their earnings are taken away in form of taxes, so why not do the same for machines? They would technically earn more anyway, considering their higher labor efficiency compared to human labor.
And if human taxes go to stuff like healthcare, then why not take a part of the said Robot Tax and put it into state-funded workshops, as a machine equivalent of healthcare.
Of course I'm not an expert, so maybe the aforementioned idea has already been discussed a lot, or no one's touching the idea for a reason I don't know of yet.
Anyway, I find this submission rather good.
adamanimates responds:
Many thanks. There were articles a few weeks ago about Bill Gates suggesting a 'robot tax' of sorts, but I can't figure out a good way of deciding what the way to tax a robot is. How does it work for software? Does it count the number of workers displaced and come up with a tax based on that? I don't think it's workable, because it would be based on so much interpretation.
I think it's better to have simple, clear policies. A simple tax on capital could do that, and there are other options for debate.
I can't tell who this is targeting. I won't comment much more than that.
adamanimates responds:
Mostly my fellow Canadians, but I'm happy it got featured here too. Message is the same for everywhere, minus the flags.
Thank you for explaining the interconnecting socioeconomic web between the safety net known as "Basic Income" in regards to reducing poverty and crime prevention. For a 100 years, people have known the statistics and the connection between the lack of financial opportunities and crime, yet the poor are still victimized because the ones with wealth do not want to lose their power. Shaming the poor keeps them and others from questioning an unjust economic system.
I am an educated American college graduate who's job sector was displaced by the tech industry; I changed careers two times, held 7 temporary jobs, and still have no luck. If Canada passes the "Basic Income" law, I will be the first American to work in Canada because it is nice to have the Basic Income as a safety net. I'm unemployed and live at home and always looking for work. There must be 30 million lazy Americas, too.
adamanimates responds:
Yeah, I think the only way some people will realize there's a problem is when they find themselves out of work and get tired of blaming themselves.