People aren't lacking savings because economic policies prevent it, they lack savings because they're poor and don't have excess income to save. They use all of their income simply to survive. So no, lack of savings is not the problem, it's merely a side effect of the problem which is the dwindling value of labor in an ever more automated world. So yes, imho you are missing the point, terribly.
And no this isn't a no true Scottsman thing, the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program with qualification red tape. Yes there would be some initial fighting about how to implement BI with regards to kids and what incentives that creates, that doesn't mean it'll be endlessly politicized nor does it make the whole policy fertile ground for politics. Fertile ground for that is what we have now, with endless programs and rules about who qualifies and who doesn't and BI would vastly simplify that system while also addressing the long term social problem of the coming end of wage labor. Nothing you've said addresses the problem at all.
Your argument technique seems to be to state disagreement with my point, and then just assert that I don't understand your point.
> they lack savings because they're poor and don't have excess income to save
And yet we're witnessing the creation of even more poor people (ie hand-to-mouth), in educated industries which have not been automated away yet. Salaries in those industries are keeping rough pace with the official CPI, so what gives?
> the problem which is the dwindling value of labor in an ever more automated world
Yes, we agree this is one of the fundamental problems here - I'm not "missing the point" as you keep insisting. I'm also saying that another fundamental problem is that fiscal discipline went out the window when USD disconnected from the gold standard, a slow acting moral hazard which is only being felt decades later. With technological and market progress, we would expect prices to be continually dropping (which would mean people would have to work less to survive), so any diagnosis must address this as well.
What you seem to be doing is taking the logical induction that led to the idea of BI for granted. And then refusing to follow the logical induction around other ideas. Of course BI is going to look like the solution if you refuse to consider that there could be other approaches.
> the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program
As I said, this is an anti-feature to those who derive power from controlling such programs. This includes voters.
It's a bit frustrating to have entire points responded to with only an assertion to the contrary. You questioned the honesty of my argument ("you really don't know what BI is"), so it seemed reasonable to point out what I perceived as a fundamental problem with our conversation. I can't particularly see what I would have said differently to keep our thread from slowly going off the rails, but I apologize for my part.
I'm done beating this dead horse if you are. But perhaps you'd view my argument in a different way if I said that I don't have a philosophical problem with BI, and that I'd support the idea iff interest rates were back up to say 10% ? The main point I've been trying to get across is that in the current monetary environment, BI seems akin to adding a second garden hose to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
It's equally frustrating to watch you continually setup straw-men version of BI to then knock down while accusing me of arguing poorly all the while ignoring what BI is actually attempting to solve, while continually introducing non-sequiturs like the gold standard which further derail any attempt to stay on point. As you said, dead horse, I have no interest in talking with you any further, it's pointless. Someone who thinks poor people are poor because interest rates are too low has no connection to what it means to be poor and no place discussing solutions to problems he clearly has no understanding of.
IMHO BI has gained such interest, not because it would help the poor, but primarily because everybody that would describe themselves as "middle class" is frustrated at seeing the largest part of their paycheck simply go towards rent.
Perhaps my characterization is the root of why you're seeing me arguing a strawman? But if my assessment isn't correct, then why do mainstream articles present it as such a society-changing idea? Or is this judgment incorrect as well?
The reason I keep beating this dead horse is because your nick is one I see associated with more insightful comments. That we're in such obtuse disagreement here seems odd.
Yes, my critique here "comes from the right" [0]. But please just try to give me a benefit of the doubt that my aim is actually to reduce the wealth extraction by "the capitalist class", and analyze my point on its own merit. My goal is certainly not to perpetuate the status quo.
[0] The way I see it, "left" and "right" are really just two different approaches to characterizing a problem and they generally both give some insight.
It depends on what you mean by "rent". BI is about eliminating the need to work just to survive. In a more automated world, human labor has little value and in a labor based economy there's no way to prevent the capital class from extracting the wealth, it's the nature of the beast. I'm glad to hear you're at least in agreement about the aim of reducing that extraction however, BI aims to do more than that. It aims to eliminate wage slavery which is what allows the capital class to oppress the working class to begin with.
The gold standard has no bearing on this problem. Interest rates have no bearing on this problem. People aren't poor because we don't use gold, they aren't poor because interest rates are low; they're poor because they were born into it and few can clime out because living on the edge is psychologically harmful and interferes with long term planning and thinking. Being poor is a catch 22 in many ways, like a bucket of crabs, getting out is impossible for most. This is a systemic problem, not an issue of people not working hard enough: the need for work is dwindling reducing the supply of low skill jobs which are all many are capable of in the first place.
Your attempts to drag the conversation to these other things are red-herrings, your attempts to conflate BI with the problems of existing welfare, and then say it'll suffer the downsides are straw-men.
We're in disagreement because as far as I'm concerned, you don't want to talk about the real problem, you're just finding ways to inject the standard conservative fiscal talking points into a conversation about an issue those things don't address.
So if you actually want to talk about it, I'll frame it this way; unemployment is suddenly 50% due to the sudden rise of automation. Now what do we do when half the population can't find work? People who don't have an income don't want to hear about gold standards and interest rates. They don't want to hear about welfare programs that make them jump through hoops to find jobs that don't exist. What they want, is food, water, shelter, and medical care and if you tell them to pull themselves up by their boot straps they're going to kill you and take your shit. That's the problem BI is attempting to solve. And yes, the death of wage slavery would be a huge change in the structure of society.
> they're poor because they were born into it and few can [climb] out because living on the edge is psychologically harmful and interferes with long term planning and thinking. Being poor is a catch 22 in many ways, like a bucket of crabs, getting out is impossible for most. This is a systemic problem, not an issue of people not working hard enough
See, the thing is, I understand this. I'm certainly not sitting here saying "let them eat cake", or "they need to work harder". As I said, I'm not categorically against the idea of BI. Which is why I tried to steer the subject back to middle class people - if, as you say, the effects of automation are so severe (and I agree they are), then the middle class is of concern as well. While they are better off materially, their situation exists closer to the margin (rather than already having fallen victim to the poverty trap "event horizon"). As such, it is middle class economics we should be looking at to understand the changes brought by automation.
> People who don't have an income don't want to hear about gold standards and interest rates.
Sure, but this a reflection of their stressed state and immediate needs, not proper analysis. Interest rates act on the timescale of multiple years, which is obviously too long to wait for food or shelter. We've persisted with the fundamental problem so long that direct triage is sorely needed. I'm not arguing against helping out poor people - I'm arguing against using help for poor people as the solution to the problem that we're all becoming poor!
> you don't want to talk about the real problem ... unemployment is suddenly 50% due to the sudden rise of automation
> monetary policy to support three specific goals: maximum sustainable employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
"Maximum stable employment" directly contradicts automation putting half of everybody out of work! And "stable prices" also does, as automation makes things less expensive. So either the Federal Reserve is utterly wrong about the actual capabilities of monetary policy, or their mandate clashes with technology. What is the result of this clash?
I believe that. And of course the middle class is of concern as well, however the middle class is dying, we're becoming only the rich and the poor and the poor make up the largest part of society in that sense, so that's where the focus belongs, in helping to recreate a middle class we haven't had in a long time.
> Sure, but this a reflection of their stressed state and immediate needs, not proper analysis.
No, it's a reflection of their lack of capital; interest rates matter in terms of savings to those who have enough money that the interest rate actually matters. It takes quite a lot of money before you need to care about savings interest rates. To most people, it only matters in terms of what they're paying for debt and those people want low interest rates, not high ones. To most of the population, low interest rates are far better because it decreases their debts and most of the population is in debt.
> or their mandate clashes with technology. What is the result of this clash?
Agreed, and that's where i'm going as well, we need to get past this notion of trying to attain full employment, employment can no longer be the goal in an automated world. As we move forward, what the Fed does will have to adapt to the new world where it's no longer about employment, but about how to effectively share the benefits of productivity created by technology with everyone, not just the capital class.
As to stable prices, that doesn't mean preventing things from getting cheaper, it means fighting inflation. Nothing wrong with things getting cheaper, everything wrong with them getting more expensive across the board. So they aren't in conflict with tech there, tech does make things cheaper, unfortunately, it also tends to make workers poorer as it makes them unnecessary which will eventually destroy the market for said products when no one has money to buy them.
Automation at the end of the day, is a poison pill to an economy based on low skilled physical wage labor. And an economy based on high skilled mental wage labor simply doesn't align with the realities of the human condition. Half the population has an IQ below 100, they will never be capable of high skilled thinking jobs. So the very foundation of our economy must change in order to continue down this path of automation. For the basics of living, we need more socialism and less capitalism. We need a more social democracy that takes back enough from the capital class to ensure the lower classes don't revolt take what they require through violence because they won't be able to take it through working before long.
And no this isn't a no true Scottsman thing, the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program with qualification red tape. Yes there would be some initial fighting about how to implement BI with regards to kids and what incentives that creates, that doesn't mean it'll be endlessly politicized nor does it make the whole policy fertile ground for politics. Fertile ground for that is what we have now, with endless programs and rules about who qualifies and who doesn't and BI would vastly simplify that system while also addressing the long term social problem of the coming end of wage labor. Nothing you've said addresses the problem at all.