4 ms·
You don't rule your way out of not adding value. If you have millions of people jobless, that's a problem with or without EU, with or without capitalism. And no
by kfk 10y ago
You don't rule your way out of not adding value. If you have millions of people jobless, that's a problem with or without EU, with or without capitalism. And no, basic income is not a solution. First, there is no money to maintain millions of people that do nothing. Second, it creates very perverse incentives, especially if those people vote. Hint: they will vote politicians that promise to increase basic income, even if that means destroying the part of the country that produces value (if you want to see an example of this scenario, look at Italy and its pension system which is a sort of basic income for certain privileged classes).
- good_gnu 10y ago"there is no money to maintain millions of people that do nothing". You underestimate how technological advances boost productivity. Consider driverless trucks: As soon as they are legal, companies will adopt them very quickly because of the obvious savings. Naturally, millions of truck drivers will be unemployed but the overall production stays the same (or even rises slightly). Thus it WILL be possible to pay all of these truck drivers a basic income without damaging anyone else's livelihood. Extrapolate this trend to other industries and you will see that in a few decades, it is completely possible to automate away most work while still paying the former workers approximately what they were earning before. More fundamentally, you are making the mistake of thinking of work scarcity as a fundamental problem when technological advances are rendering work less and less scarce every year.
- kfk 10y agoYeah, they have been saying this since the industrial revolution, we are still here.