4 ms·
The swiss idea is much to high. The theatlantic idea much to low. I guess Euro800-1000/month is a much better choice. A basic income should allow living, health
by kephra 13y ago
The swiss idea is much to high. The theatlantic idea much to low. I guess Euro800-1000/month is a much better choice. A basic income should allow living, health insurance, small flat, but not luxury goods like cars, big houses or the like.
A basic income should be a security net to catch all, who failed to earn enough for living, but not to much to avoid that everybody stops working and starts party.
One problem of a basic income is the iron law of wages and the private property on housing. Wages tend to balance to a point that they are barely enough to make ends needs. When wages climb, also housing costs and rental prices climb.
So a basic income must accompanied with a big social housing program to allow cheap housing for everybody. Else a basic income would only make the 0.1% who have large assets even richer, because they would earn most of this basic income by renting out housing.
- sologoub 13y agoCouldn't disagree more! We shouldn't try to provide poverty-level income. We should ensure that people can live with dignity. As a side-effect, we will also guarantee that consumption levels won't easily fall below certain level.
- dllthomas 13y agoTo me, it is not obvious that it is wrong to say "to live with dignity you must do something that benefits others in a way the market can recognize, or have a compelling story why you can't," for some value of "dignity" which is partly dependent on the surplus capacity of society.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Couldn't disagree more! We shouldn't try to provide poverty-level income. We should ensure that people can live with dignity. That's a nice goal, but its probably not practical on basic income given current technology and means of production; the more automation advances, the more basic income can be (and, arguably, the more it needs to be) but if you aim to high you end up driving down production and driving up prices uncontrollably.
- dllthomas 13y ago"One problem of a basic income is the iron law of wages and the private property on housing. Wages tend to balance to a point that they are barely enough to make ends needs. When wages climb, also housing costs and rental prices climb." I think that's much less true with this kind of a system than in the situations we more frequently see, because this is not localized. When wages climb in, say, SF then people move to SF and drive up the price. When wages climb whether they're in SF or Troy, MI you don't see the same dynamic. You might even see housing prices fall if people decide it's easier to make a better life for themselves elsewhere, when their presence is pulling resources to regions with a low cost of living.