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What if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like Alaska? Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A
by twic 6y ago
What if you did it in some moderately isolated place, like Alaska?
Alaska already has almost-universal not-quite-basic income:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
- luckylion 6y agoHow do you handle people wanting to move to Alaska? And how do you get Alaskans on board for paying higher taxes to fund it? If you're not asking them to fund it, you're not testing UBI, you're testing "if an external entity provides money to a community without asking for anything in return, will that be cool?"
- RockIslandLine 6y ago"And how do you get Alaskans on board for paying higher taxes to fund it?" The APF is funded by severance taxes on oil & mining. I suspect that most people are entirely fine with that tax model. The problem is that it only supports a small benefit.
- luckylion 6y agoYeah, and to increase it 5 or 10 times would certainly require new taxes. I don't know whether oil and mining will still be profitable with a ten-fold increase in royalties, taxes and fees, but I have a feeling that it won't.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoThe annual dividend is around $1000. I wouldn’t call this UBI exactly.
- twic 6y agoHence "not-quite-basic"!
- hadtodoit 6y agoMany people actually survive on that one check. Alaskans are fiercely independent for the most part, and those living outside the main cities are typically self-sustainable. They own their land, hunt for their meat, grow their veggies, trade for what they don't have, and spend whatever money they do have on the essential tools to sustain that.
- HideousKojima 6y agoHow would that work in a city where an acre costs millions?
- hadtodoit 6y agoUnlikely that someone paying a million an acre would want to hunt for their meals. Alaska works because people are self-reliant but community bonds are incredibly strong. Beyond a certain population density, that type of community doesn't work.
- gowld 6y ago> trade That's income, even if it's not denominated in dollars. Presumably they also own land and a house, which is wealth. The point behind the UBI concept that it does it's thing even if you have no income because you love somewhere where you can't farm your own food and have your own land with your own house in it.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoYou need a lot of available land to live off the land. This may work in Alaska but in other states this can’t be done on a large scale.
- hadtodoit 6y agoYou really don't need much land to get by. Alaskans who are self-sustainable usually have small greenhouses they only farm in during the summer months. In a place like California where you can grow things year round, a quarter acre plot would be plenty for a whole family. Thanks to marijuana farms, indoor hydroponics equipment can be had for cheap. If you have a space to setup, you can grow fresh vegetables indoor year round.