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Under basic income, you _always_ come out ahead when you work. you can take a dollar, or you can have a 2 dollar tax cut. I've never personally been in the pos
by jfoutz 8y ago
Under basic income, you _always_ come out ahead when you work. you can take a dollar, or you can have a 2 dollar tax cut.
I've never personally been in the position, but i've met quite a few folks that refuse to take a job, because it screws up their benefits.
BI is not a panacea. There are folks out there that can copyedit 30 hours one week and none the next. There are employers who would love the extra occasional help. Unfortunately taking that job nullifies disability - even though they can't work a large fraction of the year.
Before widespread access to computers it made sense to just take the loss on those edge cases. There's really no excuse any more. I know a handful of examples may not be convincing, but i'd argue the existence of even one person means the big picture is pretty screwed up.
BI, again, might not be the answer. Sharp cliffs, creating situations where willing people are screwed over when they want to work is stupid. BI is a pretty obvious easy patch for those weird islands we've created in our current byzantine rule systems.
- rebuilder 8y agoI don't disagree, but fixing edge cases in social securit, while important, wasn't really what was being discussed. Sure, you could probably eke out some increased efficiency from basic income if it fixes the problems you describe without being too expensive. As far as the wider economic issues though, isn't it just kicking the can down the road a bit? The big picture is that our society is predicated on continuous economic growth, and that's just not tenable in the long run. Basic Income may be a part of the answer, but we're going to need far bigger changes than that. What changes, I sure don't know.
- sanxiyn 8y ago> The big picture is that our society is predicated on continuous economic growth, and that's just not tenable in the long run. On the other hand, US real GDP per capita grew 2%, year after year, for more than a century now. It is both the case that exponential growth is unsustainable, and that exponential growth has been sustained. Since exponential growth since industrial revolution is almost entirely responsible for current human welfare, we should try our hardest to continue it.