Counter-counter-counter-point: Let’s not neglect A) our gigantic economic head start over Europe post-WWII and B) Japan’s pretty amazing innovation record with a social welfare system more involved than ours.
Not to speak for him, but “as possible” is a very nice constraint, and “family owning…means of support” could be as simple as an ESOP.
I mean, technically, I own part of my own means of support now, since I have shares at my company by virtue of the fact I work at my company.
Counter-counter-counter-counter point: We were still more innovative before the war, and Japan doesn’t have some great social welfare system (other than UHC). And Japan was not really innovative, but rather just really good at manufacturing. Entrepenuerhip, not so much, and that’s what we were talking about.
I’m under the impression that Japan sets a fairly decent minimum household income and pays benefits up to that minimum below it–which is at least applicable to the discussion.
You could be right. Why don’t you give us a cite to show that you are?
This article from Japan Times gives the benefit for a single mother of two as somewhere between Y158,300 and Y193,900 per month (variance based on cost of living adjustments) as of 2011. According to this chart (warning, PDF, Japanese and English) that’s around a third or a little more of the income of the average household over the period between 2005 and 2010 (Y471,727, from table 19-1) and not terribly far from the average one-person household monthly income for earners under 30 (Y253,952/mo, from table 19-8)
So it’s not extravagant, but it’s not terribly shabby. As I interpret the data, it’d be the equivalent of giving that same mother with two kids somewhere between $16,800 and $20,600 per year in benefits (based on the 2009 median US household income of $50,221), and leaving aside the fact that health benefits are included under the Japanese system.
Now, as per my first cite, Japan is having increasing growth in people who just sit and take their welfare, but that’s being blamed largely on the recession rather than on people being satisfied to be basement-dwellers on the dole. I also note that the total people on welfare is rising fast in this recession but hasn’t yet hit the all-time peak, even if the number of households is rising alarmingly (which is supposedly being blamed on the explosion of single parenthood since the 1980s, but no cite on that). The article is also unclear as to how much job-seeking is required for the unemployed but able-to-work.
I. You’re comparing the share of the tax base paid by the richest deciles.
A. The richest decile in the USA includes Bill Gates of the astronomical income, and numerous other billionaires. Some of their corresponding cohort in Europe are hiding out in Monaco.
B. The poorest decile includes homeless, incomeless persons who pay no tax at all, as opposed to Europeans who have enough of a dole to buy their goods with VAT’s.
II. The amount taxed should be subtracted from the amount paid in benefits to get a real picture of how progressive things are.
I. Is your family member an economist, sociologist, historian, labor negotiator, or someone else with “expertise” in how much is too much for someone to work? No? Then maybe your family member is someone acting misguidedly, in perceived self-interest but with dangerous social effects.
For that matter, what gives me the expertise to say someone smokes too much? I’m not an oncologist, but I know that there is a statistical increase in cancers among smokers.
II. I imagine the point he was trying to make is that no one should be* forced* to work more than 40 hours a week.
So it’s your contention that leeches, or parasites, that feel entitled to the fruits of another man’s labor, sink the economy?
Tell me, are you a Leninist? Why not? Why aren’t you trying to bring down the parasitic “ownership society” class, and make everyone proletarian?
My contention is that if you make leisure too attractive, then a percentage of your population will cease to labor. It is basic labor economics.
But that’s not the choice. We’re not saying, “Work and get the same as if you don’t work.” We’re raising the floor, and then you can work for more.
This is the part of this debate that just boggles my mind, personally. I do not know of one single person–and I know a lot of people on welfare, my hometown’s on-the-dole rate has been higher than 50%–who is content with ONLY getting food and roof and a shitty TV.
Witness people who DON’T have reliable food, heat, or roof nonetheless buying iPhones, widescreens, etc. with the money they DO have. They do it every day. My evidence? Rent-a-Center exists. The average credit card debt in this country is what, $10k per household?
Under a system where everyone gets their necessities of life met, and the “basic” internet and TV here I’m envisioning as “CNN, BBC News, and Fox News on a 13 inch screen” and “56k, with a Atom processor that cannot effectively handle anything other than text-only type sites”, I’m willing to bet that a fair chunk of everyone who worked before will work now for approximately the same wage, they’ll just spend significantly more of it on cars and big TVs and their Droid X and NFL Sunday Ticket on the cable and significantly less of it on shitty food and shittier housing. Throw in a clause that people in this housing are not eligible for any form of revolving credit or leasing of durable goods, and I’d be willing to bet that you wouldn’t see any particularly noteworthy drop in employment in people living in this kind of situation.
I’m further willing to bet Algher, personally, wouldn’t sit on his ass in his shitty subsidized room. I’m willing to bet Algher can afford, as most of us here can, so much better housing and entertainment that it’s not even in the galaxy of conceivable choices to settle for it, no matter how much leisure time it would give him.
I mean, no one says the provided stuff is luxurious or stylish. It’s “basic”, with just enough access to communications to “keep you hooked into the culture”.
You seem to think austerity is a necessary corrective, and not either a scam or a horrible, horrible mistake. In general, austerity causes depressions by actively depressing the economy. In a depression, it’s the equivalent of treating a bruise by punching it harder.
Western Civilization? Really? Is that what it’s about? The cultural continuum from Newt Gingrich back through John Calvin and Louis XIV and back to the iconoclasts? I’ve read enough history to not actually care that much.
The crash actually was pushed by professional capitalists, in both the USA and Europe. The capitalists screwed everybody over.
Or are only offered that much for their labor.
Duh. Which is why there should be a standard subsidy for everyone, which would function as a personal tax deduction at higher income levels, and most definitely not a benefit that is suddenly cut off at such an income level that it’s better not to work.
You seem to be thinking this will be structured in some way that no one can work for more than the basic income guarantee. That of course would be a recipe for disaster. But that’s unnecessary.
Here’s a simple version of a serious proposal for income redistribution: Every adult pays 25% of their income in tax to a national fund. A the same time, every adult gets a refundable tax credit of 25% of the mean income. The net effect is a marginal tax increase on those with above-mean incomes, and a subsidy of those with below-mean incomes. Toward the mean, the subsidy tapers off; at the mean, one breaks even; and then one’s taxes rise slowly above the mean.
If you can’t understand this, the existence of any tax more complex than a capitation tax must confuse you something fierce.
Not what we’re doing. If we value his labor output more highly per unit, then we actually better his lot in life, even leaving him leisure time. If we subsidize him, we actually better his lot in life. But if we make him overproduce until his sector gluts and he loses his livelihood, we beggar him.
No, in this case gamer was exactly right, John shift the goalposts and he called John on it.
I was thinking Tony Hoare for the quicksort function and the Request for Comments international system for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Lots of the foundational work for the internet occurred with government military grants. Hell, Chomsky’s early linguistics work was funded with military grants. Quite a bit of development towards the internet occurred using university funding as well.
Japan is an interesting case, since in the 80s they were producing supercomputers vastly superior to the US. However, the US was their biggest market. The free market solution? Impose tariffs and subsidise domestic production, cripple Japan’s supercomputer market.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
No, in this case gamer was exactly right, John shift the goalposts and he called John on it.
[/QUOTE]
Rather than the tedium of quoting the back and forth from John and gamerunknown I’ll just say you are wrong and leave it up to anyone interested to simply scroll up and judge for themselves on who burned down who’s castle.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
You seem to think austerity is a necessary corrective, and not either a scam or a horrible, horrible mistake. In general, austerity causes depressions by actively depressing the economy. In a depression, it’s the equivalent of treating a bruise by punching it harder.
[/QUOTE]
Where did you get all of this out of what I said there? Or did you just want to make wild statements about ‘austerity’ and used my quote as a springboard to do so?
Just FTR, I don’t think that ‘austerity’ is a silver bullet fix for all things. That said, your claims that it’s a ‘scam or horrible, horrible mistake’ and ‘In general, austerity causes depressions by actively depressing the economy’ is unsupported thus far by any evidence on your part backing it up. Germany and several countries in Northern Europe used ‘austerity’ measures in the last few decades to get themselves back on track, and it seemed to work well enough for them (which is one of the reasons Germany is pushing for it in countries on the verge of default who are wanting Germany to pony up vast sums to bail their asses out of the mess they made).
I don’t think ‘austerity’ alone is going to fix places like Greece though. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to ‘fix’ them at all, and if that’s all they do then it certainly might lead to a depressed economy (though doing nothing would lead to total collapse, so depression might be preferable). Greece’s problems are systemic, so there is no silver bullet fix, and in fact there might not be any short or even medium term fix at all. Certainly, no matter what, they are going to feel the burn for years and decades to come. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Iceland…they are all in similar boats and simple ‘austerity’ isn’t going to, on it’s own, fix all their problems in a short term and make everything work again and be good. Their problems are too large and complex for a simple fix like that to work. C’est la vie.
Now…I’ve given you much more on the subject than you had before on where I stand on this subject, so feel free to comment on THAT if you like. 
-XT
Finally someone drops in a proposal beyond the original one of giving every individual person a free private room, food, clothing, healthcare, TV and internet. All I have responded to in this thread was this original proposal. I have said why I believe that it will result in problems, I have mentioned a few studies that show what happens to labor hours when there is free money available, and I have mentioned some basics of labor economics.
Your proposal, on the other hand, would be a significant wealth distribution tax. I would expect an inflationary effect on certain sectors such as rental housing to be the first, and most immediate result.
But let us take a look at the numbers. While you said taxes for adults, our tax system typically looks at household income. To keep the math clean, I will use that and also round it to $50k per US Census numbers here:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
So here is my quick table (I wish I knew how to code to keep the Excel Table on the board):
Income Tax Credit New tax New Income % Change
-
12,500 - 12,500 Infinite
25,000 12,500 (6,250) 31,250 25%
50,000 12,500 (12,500) 50,000 0%
75,000 12,500 (18,750) 68,750 -8%
100,000 12,500 (25,000) 87,500 -13%
150,000 12,500 (37,500) 125,000 -17%
200,000 12,500 (50,000) 162,500 -19%
In this model you want to give $12,500 to every household in exchange for increasing the taxes on everyone above median (which will hit the middle class harder, given the lower percent of disposable income that they have). To do this, you will raise the taxes on the upper middle class by 10% or more, and roll into an almost 20% tax increase on the top income earners.
I don’t think that $12,500 is enough to give every non-worker the free benefits outlined early in this thread, but it could be a start. You are really close to the concept of the earned income tax credit program that we already have, except you don’t want to make anyone work for the $12,500.
Not sure why you decided to drop into asshole mode here.
Not to mention that a) I hadn’t set any goal posts (just asked a question), and b) it was a different poster creating a new context, what with the life expectancy issue brought up.
Well that was in defense of Japan, a big corporation with wealthy stockholders and management. Middle class workers: outsource 'em! Conservatives are all about the one percent, the rest of can go to hell. Just try mentioning tariffs to protect middle class jobs on this board, the howling will raise the roof!
Well yeah, because tariffs have worked so well historically that only conservatives would have a problem with imposing them. 
-XT