Basic Income for Artists

[gjones]

Soon enough there'll be UBI for everybody.

 

Elon says we've got 5 years max.....

 

 

 

 

[Gank Bass]

46 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

Maybe take away the loopholes that enable billionaires to hoard their wealth whilst paying ignorant flagsh@ggers to spread the idea that immigrants are to blame for all of the problems they themselves have caused, but don't want to help solve.

 

B-b-but the boats!

 

Very well put.

[tegs07]

1 hour ago, Misdee said:

Sweden is ,however, a society which tolerates one of the highest levels of taxation in the world.

 

Myself,  I would be happy to live in such a country. Convincing the wider British public to submit to such a system would be pretty much an impossibility.

 

The whole of the developed world is moving away from that kind of a social model. Public spending is something to be restricted and cut back, not expanded to include people who think they have a right and a need to express themselves.

 

The Swedish system has its roots in progressive liberal ideas that flourished in the 1960's and 1970's. The reality is that in countries like Britain and the USA we are heading back to the 1920's where ordinary working people were kept in a state of anxious uncertainty as a way of keeping them more useful, more profitable and less troublesome to their employers. More work, less pay, less rights.

Sadly inequality in Sweden has risen sharply since the 1990s and it is now the largest gap between rich and poor in the Nordic countries and also has a rising pace of racial tension and populist support than other Nordic countries. It’s probably not surprising that intolerance and populism goes hand in hand with inequality. It’s a trend playing out across the democratic world. 

The solution to this crisis IMO is only achieved through sound money and taxation of wealth rather than the narrow focus of income.

This chart tells us everything we need to know if we continue down this path. Governments via central banks will continue to borrow massively and the velocity of money supply will continue to cause inflation while having a less and less impact upon economic growth. This is a doom loop feeding inflation of assets and a crisis in the bond markets as investors retreat from a system that is mathematically doomed to collapse eventually.

 

The ultimate question who is going to profit and who is going to lose when it does collapse? Mathematically it will. There will also be a change (probably 2 very different ones) to try and stop the collapse. I suspect the biggest losers will be everyone who has no understanding or interest in this chart or what is going on behind the scenes over the next decade. There is a way out of this situation but it does involve people understanding what is happening rather than accepting that the purchasing power of their wages is falling or blaming immigrants.

Edited 6 hours ago by tegs07

[tegs07]

53 minutes ago, gjones said:

Soon enough there'll be UBI for everybody.

 

Elon says we've got 5 years max.....

 

 

 

 

Elon is part of the problem and not the solution. His involvement in other countries politics is frankly terrifying. 

[Dad3353]

38 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

 

... I suspect the biggest losers will be everyone who has no understanding or interest in this chart or what is going on behind the scenes over the next decade.

 

Now there, I would beg to disagree. There are those (not many, but some...) who have a very different notion of 'winners' and 'losers', and would consider themselves already 'winners', having stepped off the carousel decades ago. Complaisance..? Maybe. Smug..? Not really, as it's still a darned shame seeing the whole shebang going to pot and causing such misery. Never in Human History has there been such potential for Universal Well-being, and such refusal to bring it about. Ship of fools indeed. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Dad3353

[tegs07]

8 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Now there, I would beg to disagree. There are those (not many, but some...) who have a very different notion of 'winners' and 'losers', and would consider themselves already 'winners', having stepped off the carousel decades ago. Complaisance..? Maybe. Smug..? Not really, as it's still a darned shame seeing the whole shebang going to pot and causing such misery. Never in Human History has there been such potential for Universal Well-being, and such refusal to bring it about. Ship of fools indeed. 

Again this is timing. You planted your radishes during the right season. It’s now mid January.

[Dad3353]

10 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

Again this is timing. You planted your radishes during the right season. It’s now mid January.

 

It is what it is. After the Winter, Spring comes. Whatever the 'disaster' looming, stuff will happen, folk will pick up the pieces, Life will go on. There's a high probability that the same mistakes will happen again, and that, in a couple of generations, things turn bad again, but Doom and Gloom only lasts until the next Renewal. Mankind may, eventually, shake off this cycle, but whoever fears a crash is simply out of sync, s'all. That's Life, though. 

[tegs07]

2 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

It is what it is. After the Winter, Spring comes. Whatever the 'disaster' looming, stuff will happen, folk will pick up the pieces, Life will go on. There's a high probability that the same mistakes will happen again, and that, in a couple of generations, things turn bad again, but Doom and Gloom only lasts until the next Renewal. Mankind may, eventually, shake off this cycle, but whoever fears a crash is simply out of sync, s'all. That's Life, though. 

I guess that in the same way that the pound was strong against the franc and property was cheaper in rural parts of france than england there are opportunities now. if people are looking for them. there are also organisations like positive money and people like gary stephenson campaigning for change. the right wing and the tech bros are not our only options.

[TimR]

As far as I can tell, a lot of people in their 50s decided that they don't actually have to work anymore and retired early, and downsized.

 

There are also huge numbers of people injured by the pandemic who mentally and physically cannot work. 

 

There are also people working from home - at least one day a week. This reduces income to all the support workers - cleaners, coffee shops, sandwich shops, transport. Evening entertainers and pubs who would busy all week are quiet on Fridays. 

 

This ultimately affects the country's productivity. 

 

If you can guarantee someone some kind of income regardless of how much work they do, then you move them from being on benefits and they become a productive member of society. People who don't work are a net drain on society. 

 

This is the aim of the Artists Universal Benefit, to keep them performing and drag the arts back to where they should be following the pandemic. 

 

It needs to be done in conjunctuion with tax breaks to venues, and support for them, until people start coming out of their homes again. 

 

Its the tech giants who have manipulated people to be addicted to smart phones that need to be put in check, not only are they making obscene profits, but they're destroying the 'community'.

[Russ]

1 hour ago, Misdee said:

Sweden is ,however, a society which tolerates one of the highest levels of taxation in the world.

 

Myself,  I would be happy to live in such a country. Convincing the wider British public to submit to such a system would be pretty much an impossibility.

 

The whole of the developed world is moving away from that kind of a social model. Public spending is something to be restricted and cut back, not expanded to include people who think they have a right and a need to express themselves.

 

The Swedish system has its roots in progressive liberal ideas that flourished in the 1960's and 1970's. The reality is that in countries like Britain and the USA we are heading back to the 1920's where ordinary working people were kept in a state of anxious uncertainty as a way of keeping them more useful, more profitable and less troublesome to their employers. More work, less pay, less rights.

The headline tax rates in Sweden are pretty high. Their overall tax burden is pretty similar to the UK though, when you tot everything up. For instance, they have no council taxes - their municipal taxes are part of their income tax. There’s nothing like stamp duty or anything like that. Overall, they have fewer things that are taxed, the UK has more “stealth taxes”. 

 

My point of view is that, if I must pay tax, which I must, I want to see that I’m getting good value for what I’m paying - over there, the value is far more obvious, with free uni, good primary/secondary education, very cheap subsidised childcare, stuff like the “kulturskolan” system I mentioned above, excellent maternity/paternity benefits and so on. And people are glad, and, in some cases, consider it their patriotic duty, to pay it. It’s a different mindset. Ironically though, they have more stuff that’s part of the private sector than the UK - hospitals, doctors, etc are all private entities there, they’re just paid by the government, unlike most of the NHS. They have no minimum wage, but they have very strong unions for basically every work sector, even for people right at the bottom of the pyramid. 

 

The UK seems to have the mindset that we want all those sorts of benefits, but we want to pay US-level taxes (which, take it from me, aren’t as low as people seem to think). 

[Burns-bass]

2 hours ago, gjones said:

Soon enough there'll be UBI for everybody.

 

Elon says we've got 5 years max.....

 

 

 

 

Not as if he has a vested interest in treat in it or anything…

 

AI has huge potential but the payoffs have yet to come.

[Burns-bass]

10 minutes ago, Russ said:

The headline tax rates in Sweden are pretty high. Their overall tax burden is pretty similar to the UK though, when you tot everything up. For instance, they have no council taxes - their municipal taxes are part of their income tax. There’s nothing like stamp duty or anything like that. Overall, they have fewer things that are taxed, the UK has more “stealth taxes”. 

 

My point of view is that, if I must pay tax, which I must, I want to see that I’m getting good value for what I’m paying - over there, the value is far more obvious, with free uni, good primary/secondary education, very cheap subsidised childcare, stuff like the “kulturskolan” system I mentioned above, excellent maternity/paternity benefits and so on. And people are glad, and, in some cases, consider it their patriotic duty, to pay it. It’s a different mindset. Ironically though, they have more stuff that’s part of the private sector than the UK - hospitals, doctors, etc are all private entities there, they’re just paid by the government, unlike most of the NHS. They have no minimum wage, but they have very strong unions for basically every work sector, even for people right at the bottom of the pyramid. 

 

The UK seems to have the mindset that we want all those sorts of benefits, but we want to pay US-level taxes (which, take it from me, aren’t as low as people seem to think). 

It’s because we’re spoonfed lies by people who seem to know no better.

 

 

[BigRedX]

4 hours ago, TimR said:

There are also people working from home - at least one day a week. This reduces income to all the support workers - cleaners, coffee shops, sandwich shops, transport. Evening entertainers and pubs who would busy all week are quiet on Fridays. 

 

Maybe other offices are different but in the days before I worked from home I didn't spend any more or less money on these things.

 

I had organised my life so that I lived within walking distance of where I worked, I didn't "grab a sandwich or a coffee" on my way to work. I would have breakfast before I left the house, if I needed lunch, take it in with me, otherwise I wouldn't bother, and then I'd have dinner that I made myself when I got home. There was no time to go to the pub at lunch time or after work, and unless I was rehearsing or gigging I would have things to do that would preclude going to the pub. The office would need cleaning every day irrespective of how many people were there.

[Dad3353]

25 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Maybe other offices are different but in the days before I worked from home I didn't spend any more or less money on these things...

 

You mean to say that you lived a life that was ... [Shock..! Horror..! Gasp..!] ... normal..? 

 

...