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Basic Income Observations Log: Entry One
- shostack 11y agoReally interesting read and congrats on your first post with this. Your point about security is a really important one. At the end of the day, if you do something that pisses people off, or even if others just decide they have better uses for that money, you lose your funding. So there is still some sort of string attached whereas there in theory would not be one (or a different type of one) with a government program. You may have posted this elsewhere, but I'd love to get some background on where you live, what your expenses/cost of living are like, etc. If the government rolled out a basic income program in the US, I'd honestly consider looking at where I might be able to buy a house such that the basic income would cover a substantial portion of the mortage/taxes. Probably somewhere less desirable in fly-over country, but being essentially a step closer to retirement like that could pay off huge in the long run. In fact, with the more mobile lifestyle we're seeing people have these days, I could see that being a viable path for young people who aren't established yet and are looking to figure out their path in life. In terms of budgeting, has this added security caused your expenses to grow to account for the new funds? Or are you working hard to keep expenses the same? The interesting thing is that with your experiment, you aren't really impacted in the same way as you would be if EVERYONE suddenly had this, because there's a reasonable expectation that market prices for everything would rise to consume the new income.