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Politics and Economics
According to every recent survey I've read, Trump supporters are well aware of the President's character defects and many don't agree with all his policies, yet they continue to support this vile man because they trust his overall policy instincts, don't mind or even enjoy the show he puts on, and/or really, really hate the Democrats.
But wait! Won’t robots and AI free us from the need for labor? So can't we just ignore all the evidence re work disincentives and labor market participation?
Today's topic is: Why Many People don’t Return to Work after Not Working for a Period of Time
In Europe, high unemployment has been associated with the following: “generous unemployment benefits that are allowed to run on indefinitely, combined with little or no pressure on the unemployed to obtain work and low levels of active intervention to increase the ability and willingness of the unemployed to work" …What is it about work, and looking for work, that so many people would prefer not to?
UBI advocates often argue that government benefits only disincentivize work when they’re means-tested or stopped if the recipient gets a job. They argue that if you eliminated this “work-penalty”, there’d be no work disincentive. For proof, they point to Alaska...
With the proposed UBI, how many US citizens and residents would be tempted to stop working, reduce their work hours, take longer job breaks, or plan gap years from work? Consider, for instance, the results of a recent survey of older workers...
A whopping 57% of households in the bottom income quintile are single individuals. This is not so surprising, given that 44% of bottom quintile households are headed by individuals younger than 25 or older than 64. We're talking young people and seniors.
Per previous posts, this UBI scheme would cost about $4.1 trillion a year in new taxes. Let’s have the business community pay $500 billion of that. That leaves a $3.6 trillion tax tab for US households.
...to fund this UBI proposal with a stable source of tax revenue, we will need a broad-based tax base, like that of the Scandinavian Counties. For instance, like in Denmark, where “plumbers pay the same 50 percent income tax as hedge fund managers.”
Motion Summary: Basic income recipients would include children and adults; the employed and unemployed; and citizens, permanent residents, and all other residents who could prove a residency duration of at least three years. The amount given would start at $1,000 per person per month and be pegged to GDP growth going forward. No programs in the existing social safety would be replaced by this policy...This begins a series of posts laying out my case against the above UBI proposal.
...you insist on seeing things as binaries rather than continua. Either this or that, e.g., save the environment or help business; serve the rich or help the poor.
Wealth is not the same as money. For the wealthy, it's mostly equity in businesses and financial assets, e.g., value of equipment, shares, stocks, and retirement accounts. These are assets that do work: build businesses, provide funds for capital investments, grow the economy, etc.
Specific classes are where you spend part of your life. Class is a range on a distribution, not a static group, except for some people. The trajectory is usually up with age, then plateau in one's 50s, then decline. But reaching the middle class is important, because if it lasts more than a few years, that means you can buy a house, accumulate equity, and have more options later on.
Moderates are often considered weak versions of the Real Thing - people who lack strong convictions, who don't want to rock the boat.
The opposite was supposed to happen. Since more people would be insured under Obamacare, fewer would delay timely medical care. More would get regular check-ups. Medical conditions would be caught and treated before they got out of hand, necessitating a visit to the ER. That was the theory anyway.
That just about all personality traits show significant and substantial genetic influence is the stuff of college textbooks, e,g, Behavioral Genetics, now in its 7th edition.
...all this contributes to segregation along class lines, as families, friends, co-workers, and neighbors form increasingly homogeneous clusters of people with similar education, income, and norms. For many individuals, less class mixing means less first-hand exposure to success stories, which in turn undermines the confidence, motivation, and perseverance needed to get ahead in the world.
On the OOH website, there were some middle-class jobs that did not require even a high school diploma, but I don't want to encourage anyone to drop out of high school. Also, through sheer talent, hard work or luck, some people have successful careers in occupations that typically require more education than they have. But planning to be the exception to a rule is usually not a good move.
Assortative mating is thought to contribute to income inequality when the better educated marry mostly each other and create a privileged class that hoards the best genes, parenting, education, and neighborhoods while the rest of society gets stuck in a socioeconomic rut. That's the theory anyway. What's actually happening on the ground?
The argument in brief: an increase in assortative mating, in which highly educated women are more likely to exercise the near-universal preference of women to marry men of higher education, income, or status (“hypergamy”) has lead to increasing inequality....