Wages for Housework Act
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Author Topic: Wages for Housework Act  (Read 5839 times)
DemPGH
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« Reply #25 on: July 31, 2014, 01:50:06 PM »

I'd work, for one, and I'm sure you would, Mr. Hagrid.

I'm not so sure. If the state was paying me enough to live comfortably without having to work a job, the long-term "fulfillment" probably wouldn't trump the short-term convenience of staying home. Again, some kind of small basic guarantee is one thing, but a large amount that makes work completely optional is just asking for trouble.

But it wouldn't be necessarily "comfortable", just enough to get by. And people will always want more money, won't they?

Not necessarily. There are incredibly lazy people in the world, and if you deal with the public in any number of capacities for a while, you will see that. People will be happy to sit at home and watch the NASCAR channel all day or work on their novel. In the latter case, great, but you would have a lot of the former. It's also much cheaper to live in the woods than the city, so 30K will go much further in fly-over country than NYC or Chicago.

Ideally, it would be nice if people would put stipend money into projects or home businesses, but man, there are so many people who would just milk this dry.

I think if a person is demonstrably doing something like taking a degree (that would advance the family's interest) or making a movie or something, and can show it, some kind of income for a period of time (not unlimited) would be great, but we're seriously into cost here.
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Deus Naturae
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« Reply #26 on: July 31, 2014, 01:52:35 PM »

I'd work, for one, and I'm sure you would, Mr. Hagrid.

I'm not so sure. If the state was paying me enough to live comfortably without having to work a job, the long-term "fulfillment" probably wouldn't trump the short-term convenience of staying home. Again, some kind of small basic guarantee is one thing, but a large amount that makes work completely optional is just asking for trouble.

But it wouldn't be necessarily "comfortable", just enough to get by. And people will always want more money, won't they?
They can receive this handout as long as another member of their family is providing their income. So, a perfectly well-off housewife could receive this as long as her husband provides the majority of their income.
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HagridOfTheDeep
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« Reply #27 on: July 31, 2014, 02:22:21 PM »

I'd work, for one, and I'm sure you would, Mr. Hagrid.

I'm not so sure. If the state was paying me enough to live comfortably without having to work a job, the long-term "fulfillment" probably wouldn't trump the short-term convenience of staying home. Again, some kind of small basic guarantee is one thing, but a large amount that makes work completely optional is just asking for trouble.

But it wouldn't be necessarily "comfortable", just enough to get by. And people will always want more money, won't they?
They can receive this handout as long as another member of their family is providing their income. So, a perfectly well-off housewife could receive this as long as her husband provides the majority of their income.

Yeah, sorry. I got off on the tangent of UBI, but at least UBI has merits. Deus is right—the proposal at hand may have good intentions, but it will be so easily abused and in many circumstances we would be paying for people to live comfortably. We're basically subsidizing Ann Romney's maid.
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
Alfred F. Jones
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« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2014, 10:23:53 PM »

I'd work, for one, and I'm sure you would, Mr. Hagrid.

I'm not so sure. If the state was paying me enough to live comfortably without having to work a job, the long-term "fulfillment" probably wouldn't trump the short-term convenience of staying home. Again, some kind of small basic guarantee is one thing, but a large amount that makes work completely optional is just asking for trouble.

But it wouldn't be necessarily "comfortable", just enough to get by. And people will always want more money, won't they?
They can receive this handout as long as another member of their family is providing their income. So, a perfectly well-off housewife could receive this as long as her husband provides the majority of their income.

Yeah, sorry. I got off on the tangent of UBI, but at least UBI has merits. Deus is right—the proposal at hand may have good intentions, but it will be so easily abused and in many circumstances we would be paying for people to live comfortably. We're basically subsidizing Ann Romney's maid.

I think we all got off on the UBI tangent there - that's what my comment was. As I hope to have implied earlier I have my doubts about this proposal, to put it generously. Should we just convert this into a UBI debate?
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #29 on: August 02, 2014, 12:03:59 AM »

I've been reading all the commentary, and I'd rather we make this a UBI debate, to put it simply.

Sorry TNF for moving this in another direction, although I know you're receptive to the proposal.

Hagrid, to your concerns: I think it's reasonable to think people will just stop working (at least, some of them) if the UBI is high enough. Essentially, there's a trade-off in play, here: we provide for the basic services of the needy, and we are forced to accept some free riders. In those terms, it's not so different from the welfare debate, or any other social service debate. There will be people who take more from the system than give back. Such is life. I don't think any of us on either side can deny that lazy people exist.

The real question is: how much of the bad can we accept for the good? I personally think we should guarantee a basic income grant, rolling in all social services, enough to provide for all the tools necessary to survive: Food, Utilities, Education costs, Transportation to and from work, Clothing, Shelter commensurate to the size of the family

And to encourage city living, this should definitely be indexed to location. The only reason to give someone in SF the same grant as someone in the outskirts of Omaha is simplicity; no reasonable person could suggest that the dollar goes the same distance in those locales.

Our next step: putting numbers to these things.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #30 on: August 02, 2014, 08:13:07 AM »

You will find that is the hardest part of the whole process and probably a prohibitive one towards completion.
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
Alfred F. Jones
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« Reply #31 on: August 02, 2014, 09:56:16 AM »

Perhaps we could administer it based on the needs of each household? We can use the Social Security database (for indeed what is a UBI but a full-throated expansion of Social Security?) to determine how many people are in each household and adjust accordingly, though the census does only come around every ten years and things could vary widely in that time, or perhaps we could just take the average family size and set the UBI rate using that.

Also, to the detractors of UBI, the Venerable Wikipedia has this to say on the Mincome proposal, a trial run of a basic income in Manitoba in the 1970s:

"The results showed a modest impact on labor markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for wives, and five percent for unmarried women...Mothers spent more time rearing newborns, and the educational impacts are regarded as a success. Students in these families showed higher test scores and lower dropout rates. There was also an increase in adults continuing education...Only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse."

TL;DR support a UBI if you oppose domestic violence
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Deus Naturae
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« Reply #32 on: August 02, 2014, 09:48:47 PM »

There already is a UBI (unless I'm misunderstanding the Basic Income Guarantee), so if you want to increase that you should amend whatever bill created that, not start a new program.
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #33 on: August 02, 2014, 09:53:12 PM »

There already is a UBI (unless I'm misunderstanding the Basic Income Guarantee), so if you want to increase that you should amend whatever bill created that, not start a new program.

Well, in essence, Nixcome is a negative income tax, although they're very similar in practice. And what we're considering doing is expanding Nixcome benefits, so we'll certainly keep the BIG in mind with whatever we do.
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HagridOfTheDeep
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« Reply #34 on: August 02, 2014, 10:05:49 PM »

Nixcome is extraordinarily progressive. It was a huge overhaul. Why is a change needed so early? Especially when it will come at the expense of more debt and higher taxes? To have this talk now strikes me as very excessive. You've got the senators to make it happen, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing to do at this juncture.
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #35 on: August 02, 2014, 10:33:58 PM »

Nixcome is extraordinarily progressive. It was a huge overhaul. Why is a change needed so early? Especially when it will come at the expense of more debt and higher taxes? To have this talk now strikes me as very excessive. You've got the senators to make it happen, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing to do at this juncture.

I personally want to have this talk as soon as possible for a major apolitical reason: I actually want the minimum wage to come down. I think we can serve the dual purpose of protecting the common man while de-stressing small businesses, and that's a goal which I want to achieve ASAP.

Nixcome is very progressive, undoubtedly, but there are more steps we can take. And it's quite possible that this may turn out not to be as great a net expenditure as you think, Hagrid. By rolling up most social services into one check, we're basically just changing the entitlement structure, not just adding to it (although it'd be a bit foolish of me not to expect at least a little bit of an uptick in expenditure). And, of course, we'd save on long term administration costs if we're just cutting one check to poor families, as opposed to ten from twenty different departments.
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Fmr. Pres. Duke
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« Reply #36 on: August 03, 2014, 03:25:16 PM »

The current bill would be absolutely disastrous and downright regressive if implemented as it currently is. I'm surprised debate has lasted this long on it. The rich would be undoubtedly favored. Imagine paying housewives of millionaires and their kids who are at home an additional $31,500 a year? And inflation? If we had all of that additional money supply in the economy prices would skyrocket.

The best route is to examine nixcome and maybe move forward with an elimination of the minimum wage along with an expansion of nixcome. I think simplifying the welfare state here would be the best thing we could do.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #37 on: August 03, 2014, 03:45:14 PM »

At the very least, I'm looking forwards to my family's income increasing by $94,000 next year, on top of the $100,000 or $200,000 or $400,000 or $800,000 we might make.
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
Alfred F. Jones
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« Reply #38 on: August 03, 2014, 05:39:29 PM »

Yes, Mr. President and Mr. Simfan, sirs, that is why we have moved on to discussion of a UBI.
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HagridOfTheDeep
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« Reply #39 on: August 03, 2014, 09:05:44 PM »

Yes, Mr. President and Mr. Simfan, sirs, that is why we have moved on to discussion of a UBI.

So why isn't Nixcome enough?
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #40 on: August 04, 2014, 12:13:59 AM »

So we are dsicussing the same thing on two different bills?
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #41 on: August 04, 2014, 01:04:46 AM »
« Edited: August 04, 2014, 03:28:36 AM by Senator Tyrion »

So we are dsicussing the same thing on two different bills?

Yes, yes we are.

Yes, Mr. President and Mr. Simfan, sirs, that is why we have moved on to discussion of a UBI.

So why isn't Nixcome enough?

Nixcome, while a good step, is not sufficient to provide for the needs of the many.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #42 on: August 04, 2014, 01:11:50 AM »

First off, by what amount is the nixcome insufficient and how would we pay for bridging that gap?

Also I think you grabbed the wrong quote box on one of those. Tongue
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #43 on: August 04, 2014, 03:31:48 AM »

First off, by what amount is the nixcome insufficient and how would we pay for bridging that gap?

Also I think you grabbed the wrong quote box on one of those. Tongue

Ah, yes, I edited my post to put in the right quote. Didn't mean to reply to you twice, Yankee Tongue

I think $10000 isn't nearly sufficient for the basic needs of a person. I'd need to do more research to get to a "better" number, but my first impression is that it needs to be doubled (and treated as a grant, rather than a negative income tax).
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TNF
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« Reply #44 on: August 04, 2014, 08:31:53 AM »

I really think our best number here is 30K. That pushes someone above the poverty line (easily) and allows them some extra spending money, to boot.
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
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« Reply #45 on: August 04, 2014, 10:54:26 AM »

I don't think a UBI should include "extra spending money" - that's what jobs will be for. Perhaps 20-25K?
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PPT Spiral
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« Reply #46 on: August 04, 2014, 02:03:12 PM »
« Edited: August 04, 2014, 02:09:03 PM by The Dayman »

I'd work, for one, and I'm sure you would, Mr. Hagrid.
You might, but are you seriously denying that people wouldn't quit working if the government literally payed people to do nothing?

This is my main concern with this proposal. Even though I'm sympathetic to those who wish to stay at home, which is what TNF seems to be targeting here, I don't think I can support this.
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Dr. Cynic
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« Reply #47 on: August 04, 2014, 03:36:13 PM »

I'm iffy on this one. On one hand, I don't think we should subsidize people who don't work by giving them extra pocket money, but on the other hand, I don't feel that people who are at the poverty line should be abandoned. What we're really discussing here is if Nixcome is, in fact, enough? I'd lean toward no. I think we should do more, so I'm leaning towards supporting this.
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Deus Naturae
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« Reply #48 on: August 04, 2014, 05:11:48 PM »

Why is Nixcome not enough? This has yet to be explained.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #49 on: August 04, 2014, 06:16:42 PM »

At the very most, a stipend should target poverty level and poverty stricken individuals to give them extra money, preferably if they are raising kids or trying to go to university or take a degree. That's probably the deal I would offer, but adjusting the basic minimum income seems to be the best and most fiscally responsible route in which to go. I mean with the original I could see people quitting their jobs just so they could qualify for this.
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