4 ms·

Policy adjustments for maintaining capitalism in the post-employment era: provide a minimum guaranteed income to all citizens and abolish minimum wage. This was

Policy adjustments for maintaining capitalism in the post-employment era: provide a minimum guaranteed income to all citizens and abolish minimum wage. This was Milton Friedman's idea. This would create a massive market for a standard "life package": a combination of food, shelter, and healthcare for one person with cost equal to the minimum income. We could even have cities organized around the concept. Then, people can go to work in creation spaces where they get micro-paid exactly what their contribution is worth. Getting $5 for a blog post I write sounds great if I enjoy doing it and am not hungry.

msluyter 15y ago
This is also Marshall Brain's idea: http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm IIRC, he advocates a 25k stipend for all americans, which incidentally, given ~300M people would cost 7.5 trillion. That's approximately double the entire federal budget for 2012. Factoring in state/local spending gets you to near 6 trillion. Given that fact and our current political climate, I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that it'll be a quite a while before adopt such a solution. ;) Brain suggests lots of ways of raising the money (some rather implausible) here: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
- jganetsk 15y ago
  A guaranteed minimum income is not the same thing as a stipend. If the guaranteed minimum income is 25k, and your personal income is over 25k, the government doesn't owe you anything. You would owe the government something.