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Nice straw man, but no - I'm not concerned about the poor who work for a living, they genuinely tend to want to improve their lives and their families lives - t

Nice straw man, but no - I'm not concerned about the poor who work for a living, they genuinely tend to want to improve their lives and their families lives - that's why they are willing to work 40 hours or more a week for barely more money than could be gained on welfare. I've been there. I'm worried about the children of middle and upper-income families deciding that 'mincome' is good enough. I have yet to see any actual study or research on this that isn't 40 years old. The results were fairly positive then, but I'd like to see it replicated today. Maybe I'm worried about nothing.

DougWebb 13y ago
Just look at the children today who have parents that are wealthy enough to support their children through adulthood. Most of them, I suspect, go through college and then work, either in the family business, some business of their own (possibly a boutique business that can never earn a profit but still pays rent and tax and maybe some salaries), or in some kind of charity/fundraising business. With mincome, more children whose parents couldn't give them that kind of support would probably behave this way. And that would probably be a good thing. There are also the brats of the super-rich which do nothing but throw away money, but even they are throwing their money towards people who can make better use of it. So maybe we'd have middle-income brats living off mincome and throwing it all away without doing productive work, but so what? They're not going to hoard the money, they're going to spend it, and that will drive the economy and put the money into the hands of people who are working productively.
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  There's a great quote from Warren Buffett -- something like "I want to give my kids enough money that they can do something, but not so much that they can do nothing." The clear implication is, having a little bit of money to fall back on helps people build their lives.

DougWebb 13y ago

Just look at the children today who have parents that are wealthy enough to support their children through adulthood. Most of them, I suspect, go through college and then work, either in the family business, some business of their own (possibly a boutique business that can never earn a profit but still pays rent and tax and maybe some salaries), or in some kind of charity/fundraising business. With mincome, more children whose parents couldn't give them that kind of support would probably behave this way. And that would probably be a good thing. There are also the brats of the super-rich which do nothing but throw away money, but even they are throwing their money towards people who can make better use of it. So maybe we'd have middle-income brats living off mincome and throwing it all away without doing productive work, but so what? They're not going to hoard the money, they're going to spend it, and that will drive the economy and put the money into the hands of people who are working productively.

ScottBurson 13y ago
There's a great quote from Warren Buffett -- something like "I want to give my kids enough money that they can do something, but not so much that they can do nothing." The clear implication is, having a little bit of money to fall back on helps people build their lives.