>Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more. The way I see it, the

>Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more. The way I see it, the idea behind basic income in a largely capitalist society would be to make being poor a lot less bad. It'd still be bad, probably, as a lot of us like having nice stuff; we like living in desirable areas, and those things won't be available to people on basic income, assuming we continue to use markets to distribute those scarce goods. Those of us who come from middle class families who maintain good family relationships often have a similar option; crashing with mom and dad for a while. It's not really something you want to do for any length of time, but it's nice to know that if things really go south, you aren't homeless, and you don't have to do anything truly repugnant. But just like crashing with mom and dad, it's not really a desirable long-term option for most of us. Sure, sure, it's going to be better than the jobs that are the worst on the unpleasantness/compensation scale, and I predict would dramatically drive up wages in the least pleasant fields, (and I predict would lower the rates of the less remunerative forms of crime for money) but if you are a software developer or something, especially if you come from a middle-class family that you maintain ties to, a realistically-sized basic income isn't really going to change your motivation. Point being, unemployment (as usually defined in statistics, meaning people who want work but can't get it) will remain a bad thing, and assuming a realistically sized basic income, most people who currently work are going to want to continue working. And... this is important. We need people to continue working. The basic income choice is really, "do we want people to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" and then "are we all willing to pay rather a lot to make it so that people don't have to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" The argument in favor is the idea that if a job really is that unpleasant, it ought to be compensated for that unpleasantness, and effort ought to be put into automating that job away. Making workers less desperate would make those things happen. Making workers less desperate would also decrease the workforce participation rate. More people wouldn't work, and more people would work part time. The argument against is that this is going to be pretty expensive, both in terms of what we have to pay to get the difficult-to-automate unpleasant jobs done, and in terms of just the taxes that would be required to fund the scheme.