Can't you find a different forum?
Surely there are plenty of other places on the Internet to discuss politics? I come to The Register for technology news, not this crap.
Depending upon your point of view, head over to the Guardian or the Daily Mail.
View from a Reg reader: My take on the Basic Income
Few things are more divisive than ideas that are perceived as radical; ideas that push against what we consider to be normal, against the social or political boundaries that we have grown up and lived within. As this recent article demonstrated, when the powers that be put forward divisive ideas it doesn’t take long for the …
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Monday 19th December 2016 18:47 GMT smartypants
Re: Talking of daily mail
Just today, the paper apologised and paid up after being taken to court for making up lies about a muslim family. The 'journalist'? Why, Katie Hopkins, who describes herself thus:
"As columnist for the Mail Online, Katie brings her unique take on the day’s news and shares her honest views. Katie does not conform to PC convention but champions the spirit of hard working Britain."
With so many actual real islamic nutter terrorists doing the rounds, who knows why she felt it necessary to invent new ones. Maybe she's just a racist after all.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/19/mail-pays-out-150k-to-muslim-family-over-katie-hopkins-column
I bet that won't be tomorrow's front page headlines!
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Tuesday 20th December 2016 11:47 GMT Lotaresco
Re: Talking of daily mail
"Just today, the paper apologised and paid up after being taken to court for making up lies about a muslim family."
The Daily Hate has a lot to apologise for, only apologises for a tiny fraction of the lies told in the paper and appears to have no shame whatsoever.
They have libelled:
In fact the list of stories the Daily Hate has had to apologise for is endless. The one thing that links all the stories is that they are completely fabricated. Oddly there's one story that the Daily Heil has never felt a need to apologise for. "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!"
There's the Daily Mail "Timeline of Shame" which still captures only the surface of the lies and hate spread by this rag.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:02 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: AMBxx
Try reading the title. Reg titles can be humorous, misleading and clickbaity, but this time there is no excuse. The title was clear, accurate and succinct. With a little practice you can decode even the more cryptic titles, recognise that the article/advert will be of no interest to you, turn on your television set and watch something more boring instead. The great thing about watching television is if you do not like it, instead of turning off the television you can write an angry letter to the BBC, which could be read out and ignored by commentards busy reading comments with less pointless noise.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
As long as Orlowski gets to use this as his personal soap box against wikipedia/copyright reform/climate science/delete as appropriate, I think most readers are going to be more than happy to have the occasional dissenting voice.
Besides, it's an interesting idea that would shake up the IT market as much as it would any other. Not having to work for a big corporate to be a professional open source developer would be nice. It'd radically change the economics of running low-level tech jobs (helpdesk analysts, technicians etc.) as the driving force of the minimum wage would disappear. As the prevalence and effectiveness of automation increases it's worth us thinking about.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:46 GMT John H Woods
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
"It'd radically change the economics of running low-level tech jobs (helpdesk analysts, technicians etc)."
Agreed, but I don't think we should miss the "other end" either, by freeing up geniuses with a cool idea to subsist on beans on toast whilst they work on what will eventually become a game changing invention.
NB: I'm trying to see it, as the author suggested, from other people's view: I'm neither "low level" tech nor a genius :-)
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
"It'd radically change the economics of running low-level tech jobs (helpdesk analysts, technicians etc)."
It would totally destroy the economics of running cold calling boiler rooms. Cut off the supply of people so desperate they have to suspend their morals just to earn a basic living. With just the consciously amoral involved we might finally end them.
Which would be nice.
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Monday 19th December 2016 17:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
"As long as [He] gets to use this as his personal soap box against wikipedia/copyright reform/climate science/delete as appropriate, I think most readers are going to be more than happy to have the occasional dissenting voice."
And right on cue, there's another of His entirely predictable rants today.
Also entirely predictably, unlike any other Reg contributor afaik, any comments on His articles are pre-moderated (I remember one exception to this rule in recent years).
Does He think he owns this place or what? Is He the only contributor here that doesn't have the b***s to have His contributions opened up for direct reader input?
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
There'd perhaps be merit in your argument, but maybe not in your wording ("this crap", ffs) if El Reg's readers had not had to put up with years of "crap" from barrow-boy Worstall, political bloggist, senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, and contributor to Forbes, and other well known technology journals.
But we did. And now, maybe, just maybe, it's payback time...
Anyway, these days it's hard to tell the difference between the Daily Mail and the New Guardian.
All the best, Edward (and those in similar situations). Nil illegitimorum carborundum, as they say on the Clapham omnibus.
To those not in similar situations: good luck with tomorrow, and the day after. Think about what you'd do if it happened to you or someone close to you.
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Monday 19th December 2016 14:32 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
Nobody's forcing you to read the article. Is your life really so comfortable that you have nothing better to do than complain about the content of a news site because it wanders outside of your narrow frame of reference?
If so, I'd suggest that maybe you should pay more tax...
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Monday 19th December 2016 15:19 GMT Dave 126
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
>Surely there are plenty of other places on the Internet to discuss politics? I come to The Register for technology news, not this crap.
Technology is developed and applied to reduce labour, so why the hell do you think a discussion about jobs is unrelated to technology?
We have combine harvesters that allow a single person to harvest acres of cereals. We have machines that move earth and mix concrete to build shelters. We have pocket calculators that do the work that was once done by specialist human workers. This has been the case for decades. It is presumptuous to assume that technology will have no further effect on our social and economic lives as we look to the future. To refuse to consider these issues is to be wilfully ignorant.
Go away and read up on human history.
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Monday 19th December 2016 21:00 GMT Fungus Bob
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
Because the whole idea of UBI is to solve the problem of what to do with all the permanently displaced workers when they are replaced by robots. Whether or not this will be an actual problem is a matter of some debate but this is a case of technology and politics colliding.
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Tuesday 20th December 2016 01:33 GMT Oh Homer
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
I believe El Reg started it by posting a highly inflammatory political piece in the first place, so it's only right and proper that they should allow a counterpoint.
Although I suspect you already knew that, but it's simply that this particular counterpoint offended your right-wing sensibilities, and it had nothing to do with the lack of tech. relevance, which you could easily have found by clicking anywhere off the page.
As to the topic at hand, yes absolutely there must be a basic income, for all the same reasons as why we needed a Welfare State in the first place: In a word, compassion, a virtue that's sadly being kicked to death by the increasingly right-wing tendencies of the society we live in.
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Tuesday 20th December 2016 09:05 GMT well meaning but ultimately self defeating
Re: Can't you find a different forum?
I think you miss a fundamental point. One of the drivers of the conversation around basic income is the increasing awareness of the political classes around the impact of automation and AI. Whilst it is easy to look at this as a separate topic, the fact that there are more people than the work that needs to be done, Elon hasn't found a cheap way to ship us off planet and a lack of growth in the west means that there are lots of idle hands and bribing them to STFU as is being done in Spain is a highly relevant topic.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:05 GMT David Dawson
Universal Credit
that was kind of the idea of UC.
The problem with the benefit system pre-UC was that it was a poverty trap. You recieve multiple benefits, calculated independently. If you earn a £ over the threshold, you get that deducted from _each_. So you are worse off.
UC was designed to solve that by deducting less than £1 for each £ you make. So you are better off for working.
That was the intent, I think it's kind of working, but the IT build out was awful and too ambitious for v1.
Basic income has the positive aspect that it would be easier to manage, you just have to prove you exist, rather than declare any income. So the integrations would be easier on the back end.
From a subject critique point of view, I sympathise with the author of this article, but I see no proof or evidence that the system as a whole should be changed based on it.
If we're going to rework the social contract so totally, then we need to have some form of evidence that the people of the UK _as a whole_ will be better off, according to whatever metric we choose, and not just one portion of the population.
If we are just improving the lot of one portion of the population, and that comes at an overall cost to everyone else, then we need a more refined approach.
So, overall, the article doesn't address the point that basic income is designed to have a general effect, like medical research looks for. Statistical means would be used to prove it, and so we need to address the problem as a statistical one.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:49 GMT John H Woods
Re: Universal Credit
"If we are just improving the lot of one portion of the population, and that comes at an overall cost to everyone else, then we need a more refined approach." --- David Dawson.
The statistics are pretty much irrefutable: since the heydays of 60s optimism and social mobility, we have been improving the lot of just one portion of the population: those who need it least.
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Monday 19th December 2016 15:35 GMT Dave 126
Re: Universal Credit
>If we are just improving the lot of one portion of the population, and that comes at an overall cost to everyone else, then we need a more refined approach.
I'm not sure that we are only considering one portion of the population. At the moment, lots of people have too little work, and lots of people work too much to the detriment of their health, happiness and family relationships.
Bertrand Russell made a distinction between active leisure and passive leisure. Active leisure is walking to the pub, learning a musical instrument, pottering around in your workshop, laughing with your friends, baking a cake. Passive leisure is slumping in front of the television with a glass of scotch (because the working day has left your knackered).
If nobody was allowed to do more than twenty hours work a week, we would be more likely to adopt active leisure activities - which are better for our health, happiness and relationships. Healthcare costs would be reduced. Fuel costs would be reduced, because we wouldn't be in such a rush. When we were at work, we would be approaching our tasks with greater concentration and less resentment.
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Monday 19th December 2016 11:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
There's a critical difference. A 'negative income tax' is manifested in the UK as tax credits. Earn under a threshold or fall into a certain category and the taxman pays you money. The trade-off, as with all modern benefits (except pensions and some other old age-related benefits), is that if and when you start working and earning the support disappears.
The idea behind the UBI is that you no longer have to work to live. You get the UBI regardless. You're no longer going to be slaving 70 hours at a restaurant for £350 a week while the multimillionaire proprietor takes all your tips and the state makes up the difference. You're going to be slaving for 70 hours a week for £350 a week on top of the £500 or whatever the state is furnishing you with. It gives you the power to walk away, to work for your own betterment rather than survival and fundamentally changes the relationship between employer and employee.
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:03 GMT Phil O'Sophical
you no longer have to work to live.
Inevitably that cannot work for everyone, since then there would be no money coming in to pay us
You're no longer going to be slaving 70 hours at a restaurant for £350 a week while the multimillionaire proprietor takes all your tips and the state makes up the difference.
And that inevitably pigeonholes you as someone who thinks that all low wage earners are exploited by evil capitalists, which is not the case (nor is it's opposite, of course, reality is somwhere in the middle).
You're going to be slaving for 70 hours a week for £350 a week on top of the £500 or whatever the state is furnishing you with. It gives you the power to walk away,
Not really. Some people who are willing to work 70 hours for £350 will be so pleased to get £500 for doing nothing that they'll just put their feet up and open another beer. That will make it harder to find people willing to do those low-paid jobs, and will inevitably push up the wages in that sector. That, in turn, will push up prices and so depress sales. For industries that don't need to be local, like help desks, manufacturing, etc. it will just be another reason to offshore the work. That will export tax revenue, and make a UBI even harder to fund.
to work for your own betterment
Except that the reality is that other people will be working for your betterment, since the taxes of the people who work will be paying for your relaxed lifestyle. Many of us will want to know what we get out out of that deal. Yes, that's a self-centred point of view, but most people are self-centred.
Those people who see their taxes increasing to pay for people who choose not to work then have two choices, emigrate and take their tax money elsewhere, or elect a government that disagrees with UBI. Either way it ends in failure.
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:10 GMT munkiepus
"Not really. Some people who are willing to work 70 hours for £350 will be so pleased to get £500 for doing nothing that they'll just put their feet up and open another beer."
The evidence from trials of UBI in other countries suggests that this is not the case. people continue to work regardless. They're just happier doing so.
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:36 GMT James 51
The hyper rich and corporations would be the ones paying for it. After all they are the only ones with the money to do it. The benefit disproportionally from society, why shouldn’t they pay for it too? Plus there’s stuff like 3D/additive manufacturing and AI on the horizon that has the potential to put a lot of people out of work without the possibility of new jobs for even a fraction of the people who are made redundant.
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Monday 19th December 2016 12:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Your wrong. The hyper rich and big corporation know very well hot not to pay for it. Just look at the huge amount of money some of them sit upon in tax havens, while not paying much taxes in the country the operate.
The middle class, or what remained of it, will pay again for such nonsense. The one who can't pay the right tax consultants, can't move money easily offshore, and don't have friends among politicians...
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Monday 19th December 2016 18:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Money leaving the country bound for tax havens or off-shoring gets taxed. No need to tax the rest of the globe if you can simply tax the money headed in that direction."
Kinda sorta happens already, but not very well enforced, and as always the globocorps have a way around it e.g. Apple borrowing billions of $ in the USA to pay dividends and other US expenses, so that the matching $Billions in overseas earnings don't have to be repatriated back to the US (where they'd get taxed). See also: GE, Pfizer, etc
See also e.g. the "reverse takeovers" involving e.g. ADT/Tyco, AstraZeneca/Pfizer, and so on.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-04-28/why-apple-has-to-borrow-17-billion
[...]
A year ago, the Wall Street Journal calculated that 60 large U.S. companies, each of which held at least $5 billion offshore in 2011, piled up $166 billion of cash overseas in 2012. GE and Pfizer were at the top of that list. Microsoft, which is acquiring the mobile handset business of Finland's Nokia, was third. That makes it logical to expect large non-U.S. takeover bids from Merck and Johnson & Johnson, fourth and fifth on the list, respectively.
Bloomberg News puts the amount accumulated by multinationals outside the U.S. at $1.95 trillion, up 11.8 percent from a year ago. Moody's, the credit rating agency, has a lower estimate of a mere $947 billion. That money is burning holes in companies' pockets and spurring mergers and acquisitions activity at levels unseen since before the financial crisis. The global M&A market has reached $1.2 trillion in the year to date, with 47 percent of transactions coming in cash.
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Tuesday 20th December 2016 11:27 GMT evilhippo
Excellent way to ensure no over-seas money get involved in any UK based investments. And also a great way to ensure investors in UK keep their money well away from the Sceptred Isles & safely overseas, never to touch these shores if they want to invest in various things and would rather not get taxes for just moving the money.
People who have a lot of money are almost as mobile as their money: if you make it expensive for them to move that money, they will either move it before the law gets imposed, and then probably move themselves as well. And good luck implementing such a tax at a global level as the places that do not reap huge benefits for avoiding such foolishness. Merchantalism was cutting edge thinking in the 16th century, but now it suggests a breathtaking lack of understanding how modern wealth creation actually works..
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Wednesday 21st December 2016 20:07 GMT WolfFan
Re Dr. Syntax
Placing an export tax on money does not work. It's been tried, many times. What it does is to massively encourage means of smuggling money out. In particular it tends to ensure that those who have money keep as much of it as far away from any government which even looks as though it might start something of the kind. Unless a government can have the co-operation of other governments, the money will move. Example: during the 1970s, the government of Jamaica placed numerous restrictions on private citizens use and possesion of 'foreign echange', i.e. US dollars, British pounds, etc. Special permission, granted only to those who knew someone important, was required to legally possess more than US$55 or equivalent in pounds per year in actual cash. It was illegal to have an account in a foreign bank. However, unfortunately for the government, substantial qunatities of cash departed the island prior to the law being enacted, and were placed in banks in Cayman and the Turks & Caicos and Miami and New York and London, none of whom reported a damn thing to the Jamaican government. After the law was enacted, people went to considerable extremes to swap their useless Jamaican money for useful American (mostly) money and smuggled it out in literal ton lots. Remember, around that time was when the export of a certain green leafy vegetable product and the import for re-export of a certain white crystaline powdery product was hitting its stride. There were lots of aircraft and boats making unscheduled nighttime departures from the island. There was lots of space for a few bundles of cash on the outbound aircraft and boats. And then there were the officially departing aircraft and marine vessels; a lot of Customs men were suddenly in a position to purchase substantial houses up in the hills. And the government had a whole lot less cash than they'd thought they'd have. And the exchange rate started its free-fall, from US$2 to Ja$1 then, to the current US$1 to Ja$106.
Nor was the Jamaican government the only, or the first, to try this. The Nazis tried, hard, to restrict the flow of 'Jewish money', with limited effect. One reason why they started the war in 1939 was that they were running low on cash. Bills, notably money owed to France, Germany's biggest trading partner (no, not Treaty of Versilles stuff, though that didn't help) were coming due and the cash wasn't there, having been spent on nice shiny guns. So they elminated the debt by eliminating the creditor.
By all means try it. Maybe it'll work this time. Probably not, though.
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Wednesday 21st December 2016 21:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Maybe it'll work this time
"By all means try it. Maybe it'll work this time."
If we are to have restrictions on the free movement of people and the free movement of goods, can you explain why the free movement of money should not be similarly restricted?
In the times you write about, money was rather more than numbers in a computer. There was even a 'gold standard' in much of those times; real money with real physical backing. Things were different then in various ways.
During those times there were very few super-rich individuals or super-rich corporates, but some of those lucky enough to have a bit of spare dosh did sometimes find themselves able to hide some of it beyond reach. It was small fry in comparison to the anounts involved in today's super-rich individuals and super-rich multinational corporates.
These days, money is little more than magick in a computer, with nothing real to back it up. Computers in central banks can print more money on demand, no need for gold to be bought to back it up.
Alongside that, significantly large computerised financial transactions can be and are tracked. Significantly large cash transactions stick out a mile.
Unexpectedly large transactions are now supposed to be accounted for (the so-called "anti money laundering" regulations currently so popular with customers of major financial institutions, not just in the UK but in many parts of the world).
Times have changed. What didn't work a few decades ago could be made to work now, if the politicians were prepared to make it happen. I'm not holding my breath.
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Monday 19th December 2016 13:33 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
"...since the taxes of the people who work will be paying for your relaxed lifestyle."
But you, too, could put up your feet and make do on UBI. Why wouldn't you? And why are you annoyed that other people are prepared to make the compromises you won't make? Because it's thinking like that which has turned social security into regime more punishing and more impoverishing than an open prison.
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Monday 19th December 2016 13:48 GMT Phil O'Sophical
But you, too, could put up your feet and make do on UBI. Why wouldn't you?
Obviously because I want better than a basic living.
And why are you annoyed that other people are prepared to make the compromises you won't make?
I'm not. I'd be annoyed if I were expected to pay for them though. It's one thing to see taxes helping people who need extra help, quite another to see them go to people who simply choose to take the easy option, knowing that "someone else" will pay for it.
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Monday 19th December 2016 18:22 GMT Triggerfish
@Philosophical
I'm not. I'd be annoyed if I were expected to pay for them though. It's one thing to see taxes helping people who need extra help, quite another to see them go to people who simply choose to take the easy option, knowing that "someone else" will pay for it.
I doubt you are unaware, but there is a subset of claimants who are like that anyway, one thing said to a colleauge when I worked on housing benefits was from a middle aged woman who told him she admired him for going out and working and things like that, she never wanted to and had never ever looked for a job once leaving school, had a couple of kids, lived in a council house, it was all good. Rather annoying when I was working temp wages because being unemployed was not how I was brought up to be.
We used to estimate about 5% max of the claimants were taking the piss in one way or another (note not just by not working, you had people buying hoses and renting them to friends so they could claim stuff like that as well), or frankly are just useless.
I think you are always going to get some who don't give a shit, the downside of having a more compassionate society is there are always those who will take some advantage of it. I'd like to think the upside is though that for some people getting a better basic income could make all the difference in improving their lives because conversly I know people who were made homeless at 15 and managed to get their lives to a state were they were working in a decent full time job.
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Monday 19th December 2016 14:25 GMT cambsukguy
>But you, too, could put up your feet and make do on UBI
Except no nice car, no nice trips, no nice foreign holidays, no restaurants, no flashy xmas presents.
The only people that will accept not working and taking a small income to get by on are those that do not have a choice because they cannot work, those that have side careers (a bit of cleaning, a bit of drug peddling, a bit of day work, a bit of 'night' work etc. - cash in hand).
Many people want more than 'enough', indeed our economy requires it. Many people, myself included, have easily enough to get by but do not need loads of extras, don't need a 'better' car, don't need an expensive phone etc.
Part of the issue with stalling western economies seems to be that more people are happy enough with what they have and do not need too much extra, added to that the longevity of vehicles and flattening of performance increases of computers in general.
I am constantly amazed by how cheap stuff can be, including, often, even good food. Automation is definitely a benefit in that way at least.
I have spent almost 20 years attempting to do less work but still work, with only some success. People ask why I didn't work for a year or why there are gaps here and there. The answer cannot be 'I am lazy' or even 'I didn't need to' because we live in a society where that is resented even if that person is not a scrounger and doesn't live high on the hog either. So, I have to make excuses or stretch CV dates, tiresome.
I know that this way is better for me and would be better if we all did less where possible, especially if the alternative is only to make more and more stuff with finite resources. Far better to save the resources to use when required instead.
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Monday 19th December 2016 15:21 GMT Doctor Syntax
"Inevitably that cannot work for everyone, since then there would be no money coming in to pay us"
The recent article on this was predicated on the assumption that automation would give rise to mass unemployment.* The proposal there was to tax the work of the robots. This in itself might not be sufficient as the work could be off-shored to somewhere with lower tax rates. It would take more than simply taxing robotics but there could still be means to levy the necessary taxes. In those specific circumstances one could see how it might work.
*AFAIK mass unemployment in the past has been a result of economic meddling rather then mechanisation but I suppose there's always a first time.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
