What exactly does “productivity” mean and what is its metric worth?
Then the question should be what enabled the United States to outstrip less free countries such as Sweden. Sweden, for the matter, was neutral during WWII and was neither occupied by the Nazis or attacked be either side, so they should be a perfect example for the comparison of growth. And yet they are less productive than the US. When exactly did Sweden’s economic policies (if ever) become better than the United States and why hasn’t their overall productivity surpassed us if they really are better?
Looking at productivity growth is a bit like saying “Runner B is running the fastest! I want to run like him!” when runner A is far ahead and winning the race. It’s the wrong metric for the situation.
GDP adjusted by purchasing power parity/total hours worked by everyone in the economy=productivity
The “Swedish Model” really didn’t come into practice until the 1950s, FWIW. So it is arguable to talk of ‘less free’ (in a manner of defining the word free) until then. In 1945, the US’s GDP per capita was higher than Sweden’s (and everyone else’s - I think the US was #1 in GDP per capita by 1913) due to the fact that the US industrialized earlier than Sweden did and had more natural resources (Sweden’s not all that great on the resources).
Sweden’s economic growth during the 50s and 60s, especially was quite phenomenal.
I’m not sure why productivity growth is the “wrong metric” when we constantly look at GDP growth to measure economic health (and tend to freak out when it drops below 2%). And of course it is probably the best metric to determine if something is leading to “less productive work”.
Especially when most of the billionaires inherited their wealth. Here is the current list of Swedish billionaires from Forbes (apologies for the tabs as it’s so font dependent, but I don’t know how else to do this in this environment):
Name Residence Source of Wealth
Stefan Persson Sweden Inherited
Hans Rausing England Inherited
Melker Schörling Sweden
Jörn Rausing England Inherited
Antonia Ax:son Johnson Sweden Inherited
Dan Olsson Sweden Inherited
Finn Rausing England Inherited
Kirsten Rausing England Inherited
Bertil Hult Switzerland
Frederik Paulsen Switzerland Inherited
Lottie Tham Sweden Inherited
Gustaf Douglas Sweden
Fredrik Lundberg Sweden Inherited
Ingvar Kamprad Sweden*
Karl-Johan Persson Sweden Inherited
Tom Persson Sweden Inherited
Charlotte Soderstrom Sweden Inherited
Carl Bennet Sweden
Stefan Olsson Sweden Inherited
Torbjorn Tornqvist Switzerland
Madeleine Olsson Ericksson Sweden Inherited
Markus Persson Sweden
Thomas Sandell USA
*The IKEA guy - famously left Sweden in 1973 due to punitive taxes, returned in 2014
So of the 8 self-made billionaires, 3 (arguably 4 counting the IKEA dude) live someplace other than Sweden. Of the 20 total, 8 (or 9) live elsewhere.
And what’s up with all these nasty inherited-wealth people. Somebody should do something about that.
According to this, about 40% of the US billionaires inherited the source of their wealth. This is for the Forbes 400 which is not even a quarter of the American billionaires. Randomly checking a few at the bottom of the complete list, they were all self-made - which makes sense. So I suspect the percentage of American billionaires that are self-made is substantially higher.
Norway actually has a higher labor force participation than the US. I am not sure if this contradicts your point, though, since the difference seems to be mainly in the number of two income couples. I.e. fewer homemakers.
It is quite possible that Norway still has a larger percentage of low productivity workers removed from the labor pool.
I know, I know, zombies don’t need basic income.
I find this topic interesting. A basic income system, whereby every adult and every child were to receive $12,000 and $4,000 per year, respectively (the amount approx. at the poverty line in the US). For a family of four, that would be $32,000 for the household. These amounts would not be taxable to the recipients. There would be no means testing, every American would receive these payments, so the federal government could dismantle the welfare administrations, and social security payments could be restructured to account for the basic income payment.
Working separately, does not put in jeopardy your basic income payment, it just supplements it.
If you combined this system with an overhaul of the federal income tax system into a flat tax system, the savings at the federal administration would be enormous.
Some opponents to this form of basic income say that many people would no longer be incentivized to work. That may be true, but the % of people that currently game the system to collect welfare today to sit on their asses, isn’t a large number. But the amount of administration and fraud prevention that is in place is huge in comparison.
There is precedent for this philosophy here in the US. Similarly, many school lunch programs around the country have already gone to flat reduced lunch rate for all, meaning that all of the kids in the school get a reduced price lunch, or in some cases all kids get a free lunch, regardless of their families’ economic status. The primary purpose for these programs is the reduced administration costs of determining who is “needs based” and who is not. It also reduces the stigma of those kids who in the past had to have a card that was punched or had to go to a separate line for the reduced or free lunch. In most cases the administrative costs have been more than the incremental benefits that have been provided.
If this would streamline the efficiency of the over-bloated federal government spending It’s possibly something this fiscal conservative could get behind.
A conservative actually answered that question.
Don’t just link an hour-and-a-half long Youtube video-- Nobody’s going to watch that whole thing. Just tell us what the answer is.
IF we did away with all the current welfare and supplemental programs – food stamps, WIC, etc. – and replaced them with some sort of basic income, I would certainly be willing to consider that.
I don’t think we could afford Omar Little’s figures, unless my math is off.
Say maybe $8000 per adult and $2000 per child. For a childless couple, that would put them right at the poverty level. For a family of 5, that would be 77% of poverty level. Let’s say it’s phased out gradually–the amounts are cut to $6000 and $1500 respectively at 200% of poverty level, and $4000 and $1000 at 250%, and eliminated at 300%.
I linked a section of time, the answer is within 5-10 minutes, not that bad.
Sounds good to me. I’d also eliminate minimum wage. Though I’d keep Social Security at least as a retirement program for those who’ve paid into it. Or give them a lump sum that accurately and fairly compensated those who were forced into contributing.
What is confusing about it? If Paris Hilton or some other trust fund baby chooses not to work and drink expensive liquor all day, it doesn’t bother me in the least. She is paying her own way and not picking my pocket for a handout. In a free country, she is allowed to do that.
If someone does not have money and does not suffer from a disability, they should be expected to earn their own way before asking the taxpayers to foot the bill.
It’s not about anyone “deserving” to be miserable or comfortable. It is about doing what is necessary to pay the bills. If my neighbor goes to work to pay his electric bill, he shouldn’t have to pay mine as well. It’s my responsibility to pay my electric bill. If I am truly unable to pay, then private charity and next government programs should kick in so I don’t freeze to death in the winter.
But before they give me this money, I should be doing my well best to be carrying my own weight.
As some of you know the U.K. has a minimum wage and a welfare safety net. Having a minimum wage is a good idea, The problem is that the government set a minimum wage that was far to low and the result now is employers are using the minimum wage as the maximum that they will pay, another problem is that some families are now better off on welfare than working. A minimum living wage should have been set that made it profitable to work and higher than welfare. Welfare payments matching the minimum living wage should be limited to 6 months, after this period all major bills such as rent, council tax and power bills payed directly, food and clothing stamps (not alcohol of tobacco) for use at a designated supermarket with photo ID, travel warrants to be issued for journeys to job interviews.
Why do we not use this system in the U.K.? The EU human rights act will not let us.
You describe a “benefits cliff”, where marginal earnings result in negative income. We have those here in the U.S. too. Although they can be avoided with proper design. See the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit, which isn’t perfect, but does a lot better than some.
The main problem is you have honest hard working people who really try hard to get a return to work that you do not mind giving a hand to them, then you have the scroungers who have no intention of working and intend to spend their lives on handouts, the problem is you cannot allow the many children they have starve so you have to give them welfare, that is why I am in favour of welfare stamps.
Perhaps. People at the top generally presume they deserve to be there because of the “natural order of things”.
But trust fund babies are not having everyone else pay for their trust fund. They are inheriting it from someone who presumably at some point generated all that wealth by creating a successful business.
The thing I find so disturbing about these boards is the total lack of knowledge about basic economics. Specifically, the lack of understanding about how money and real wealth are different things and just printing money for poor people doesn’t help if that money isn’t backed by a real creation in wealth.
If you think about the reasons we don’t set minimum wage to $150k a year, you will get a similar answer to why basic income wouldn’t work as expected either.
If people can live independently without working and not living of the state the best of luck to them, they may not pay income tax but they do on investments and savings as well the usual taxes we all pay so they are not getting a free ride
You would call the games the financial sector plays with CDOs and arbitrage real creation of wealth?
Besides, there WILL be real creation of wealth … by robots and automation. Humans will become less and less involved with the creation of wealth and more involved in the spending of it.
The thing I find so disturbing about these boards is when people try and shut down conversations by implying that all the participants are ignorant of the subject. Instead of thinking that this would be a great opportunity to fight ignorance by sharing their knowledge, they instead tend to act in a smug and dismissive manner.
So, while the economics courses I took where long ago, I am familiar with the subject. So please explain to me how a basic income is totally incompatible with basic economics. While I agree it’s not politically likely, it’s not economically impossible the same way that a 150k minimum wage would be.
Our problem today is that the wealth that has been created in the past 20 years or so has gone to a smaller and smaller percentage of people - at levels far higher than their impact in wealth creation can justify. So basic income is one way of distributing this created wealth more broadly.