17 ms·

Most of those things only work when you have the vast majority of the citizens in the country as net positive taxpayers. Unfortunately, that's not the case in t

Most of those things only work when you have the vast majority of the citizens in the country as net positive taxpayers. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the USA - you're ultimately becoming a "have not" country, full of itinerant people with no employment or prospects, thanks to massive-scale de-industrialization. > basic income scheme Paying people who don't contribute so that they can continue to not contribute is not going to get you out of this problem. Your ideas are nice, you sound like a good person who wants good things for the world, but also somewhat naive and sheltered - somehow the socialist version of the libertarian shouting "bootstraps". > they'll have to leave all their physical equipment behind, and we can institute a system of grants to help workers form a union and start using that stuff It's just as likely to be burned to the ground in protest, these days. Much as the computer is more the OS than it is the hardware, the factory is more the business processes + engineering than it is the raw assembly line. Take that magic smoke out and even the nicest equipment will produce nothing. You expect squatters to move in and just resume producing widgets?

egypturnash 6y ago
> Paying people who don't contribute so that they can continue to not contribute is not going to get you out of this problem. How many businesses exist because someone had time to fuck around making a thing that nobody wanted, until suddenly they got it right and it was a thing a lot of people wanted? Basic income would grant that kind of time to everyone. > Your ideas are nice, you sound like a good person who wants good things for the world, but also somewhat naive and sheltered - somehow the socialist version of the libertarian shouting "bootstraps". dude we are living in the most extreme age of income inequity the US has ever seen, and you think me saying "what if we actually had the social safety net that I have watched corporate owned disaster capitalism systematically dismantle for my entire life" is "naive and sheltered"? ok, w/e > You expect squatters to move in and just resume producing widgets? No, I expect some of the people who were being severely underpaid to make the widgets to say "well, the boss is gone, but there sure does still seem to be a demand for widgets, let's keep making them and distribute the boss' pay more fairly".

egypturnash 6y ago

> Paying people who don't contribute so that they can continue to not contribute is not going to get you out of this problem. How many businesses exist because someone had time to fuck around making a thing that nobody wanted, until suddenly they got it right and it was a thing a lot of people wanted? Basic income would grant that kind of time to everyone. > Your ideas are nice, you sound like a good person who wants good things for the world, but also somewhat naive and sheltered - somehow the socialist version of the libertarian shouting "bootstraps". dude we are living in the most extreme age of income inequity the US has ever seen, and you think me saying "what if we actually had the social safety net that I have watched corporate owned disaster capitalism systematically dismantle for my entire life" is "naive and sheltered"? ok, w/e > You expect squatters to move in and just resume producing widgets? No, I expect some of the people who were being severely underpaid to make the widgets to say "well, the boss is gone, but there sure does still seem to be a demand for widgets, let's keep making them and distribute the boss' pay more fairly".