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If we could somehow gather up the taxes to pay for basic income, maybe we could hire people to work on all of the things in "the commons" that obviously need fi
by Roboprog 11y ago
If we could somehow gather up the taxes to pay for basic income, maybe we could hire people to work on all of the things in "the commons" that obviously need fixing or enhancing, instead.
I consider myself to the left of today's Democratic party (then again, I think Richard Nixon was more liberal than 21st century Democrats), but basic income sounds like a real moral hazard to me, and traditional Keynesian economics would likely deal with most of the unemployment problem, perhaps in conjunction with rolling back some "free trade" back-stabbing (alas, that crap was bi-partisan). Easy access to "welfare" in the 60s and 70s is what got us the back-lash of Reagan and friends.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWelfare is not the problem its made out to be. But to work on the 'moral hazard': perhaps the basic income can be earned simply by social activity like elder visits, park monitoring, mentoring, public health seminars. Encourage improvements in quality of life.
- zyxley 11y agoMaking it 'earned' is missing a major point of basic income: that just giving the money away can ultimately be much cheaper and more efficient than verifying if people 'deserve' it.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThe reason to 'deserve it' is twofold. First, to avoid folks stagnating - a public health issue. 2nd, to have some way of knowing the person actually exists! E.g. automate it with an app, that verifies simply that you spend time at places associated with socializing. Not much is cheaper than that.
- Roboprog 11y agoI guess I'm still just enough of a jerk that I would like to see the recipient's contribute positively to society, such as the examples mentioned above (child / elder care, park ranger, etc). There is plenty to be done - why don't we set people on that (roads, utilities, parks, forests, care, fire, police,... ), then see where we stand?
- jtuente 11y agoThe moral hazard is that it contributes to stagnation, something like the spaceship in "Wall-E". Social activity isn't much of a substitute for knowledge progress. I'd argue that improvements in the quality of life would be more significant by giving purpose and drive to the population as a whole (young and elder), something more akin to the spaceships in Star Trek, where menial tasks are handled auto-magically and problem solving is handled by the crew.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI wouldn't dismiss social tasks. It gets people involved in community, including knowledge progress. And who are we to decide what purpose and drive to give a population? The minimum for health and growth is socializing.
- vertex-four 11y agoMore generally, I really wouldn't trust centrally planned "knowledge progress" or socialization or whatever tasks any more than I'd trust most other centrally planned control of a society's lives. Whether it's a good idea or not, there's nobody I'd trust with that power.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoHey, the market economy is already 'planning control of lives'. We're talking about loosening those controls. By removing the threat of starvation and homelessness.
- vertex-four 11y ago> the market economy is already 'planning control of lives' Not (entirely) centrally (yet). If you piss off the wrong individual, or stand out to whatever degree, you still have a shot at a somewhat decent life. There's nobody outside of work you have to obey for threat of losing your livelihood. I was agreeing with you - basic income only works if everyone gets it, if there isn't a test for getting it, so that there's very little way it can be denied.