12 ms·

Basic Income Means Basic Freedom

69 points by samsolomon 13y ago

kaoD 13y ago
The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right? I can think of two choices: 1. Creating money from air, thus driving price inflation. 2. Redistributing income, where the top earners would have to pay for the ones which choose to just enjoy their basic income. I haven't really dug into basic income proponents' argument and the article misses the point (which IMHO is the real important point, of course basic income would be awesome). How does it hold economically? Inflation or punishing top performers seem like a really bad idea. And sociologically... how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works?
- jacalata 13y ago
  Where do open source programs come from if nobody is paid for them?
  - kaoD 13y ago
    Altruism? Many open source projects have paid contributors anyways.
    - jacalata 13y ago
      Yes, among other reasons such as solving a problem for themselves or enjoyment of the process. The point is that financial motivation doesn't even explain all the production in the economy right now, so obviously removing the financial motive won't remove all production. And a basic income doesn't imply no financial motivation anyway, how many investment bankers and programmers quit their job yesterday because they already have enough savings to eat and live in a crappy sharehouse for the rest of their lives?
  - wyager 13y ago
    Making open source projects is fun. Flipping burgers and cleaning toilets isn't. And believe it or not, people do pay for open-source programs. It's just not necessarily the end user.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      People clean toilets without being paid... just not typically other people's toilets.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Have you ever looked at the breakdown of who writes the Linux kernel? It's mostly maintained by corporations, notably companies like Red Hat and strangely enough even Microsoft.
- kiba 13y ago
  And sociologically... how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works? Robots, and higher wages for those who works.
  - wyager 13y ago
    Because taxing high earners will magically make the necessary technology appear.
    - cookingrobot 13y ago
      The magic middle step is that the job market would decide that crappy jobs need to pay a lot more. This would make it reasonable to invest in robots where it doesn't make sense today. One we make a few decades of progress on that front, I would expect the robots get so cheap that it's overall more efficient than we are today. In other words it would be the kick we need to get out of this local maxima of enjoying the benefits of cheap labor, and would end at a much better/more efficient/less abusive system.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  > how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? What if your work didn't have to suck? What if you could actually work, create something useful and enjoy it? I don't understand why people think this is such an impossible concept.
  - hobs 13y ago
    Its not an impossible concept, but most people's workplaces suck to varying degrees. Unless you are a highly valued "knowledge worker" you will find that you life has a large component of drudgery.
    - gruseom 13y ago
      To me that is an argument in favor of basic income: it would force workplaces to suck less, since they'd have competition at the bottom end.
  - kaoD 13y ago
    Most people would rather work in whatever they want than working for a wage for someone else's benefit. Even if they find their job rewarding, being told what and when to do something is not as rewarding as... not being. Also: what about highly unrewarding jobs?
    - hedning 13y ago
      Well, if no one would work the unrewarding jobs, and they were needed. The wages for these jobs would go up. As Bertrand Russell said there's two types of jobs. "The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid". Reversing this might not be the worst thing in the world.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        And/or they'll be automated (or at least sufficiently automated).
    - 13y ago
- Retric 13y ago
  The incentives for wealth redistribution are vary simple. You hand over a fixed percentage of money to the poor and they don't steal from you or end up in prison. The idea being while many poor people will not steal the overhead from those that do is high enough that it's worth a lot. As to basic income vs. other forms of welfare it's more money directly but far lower overhead. Which means people that are capable of finding productive jobs are adding to the economy vs. varying unemployment information etc. On top of that some people will simply take more risks which has a huge upside vs. unemployment where you can't get the money if your starting up your working for your self so people watch TV vs building an App. Socially, money is a huge motivator. Most collage educated people could get by working 1/2 what they do but the 20 hour work week or taking 6 months off a year did not take off instead people buy 5$ coffee at Starbucks etc. PS: And yes the poor can be a lot more disruptive than you might think just look at say the french revolution or any of the communist revolutions.
  - jswinghammer 13y ago
    That's basically all nonsense. If I have money and really feel like the poor are going to take it then I can buy security or just move far out into the country. Rich people were far less secretive in the past than they are now (for a variety of reasons). If a basic income means that I can support myself without work and have a decent living then I'm probably not working-it's pretty simple. I suspect you'd have fewer apps being built, manual labor getting done, tough problems getting solved, etc. And if I can't then why are we bothering again? The communist revolutions of the past tended to be largely nationalist in their roots. The poor ended up being terribly harmed by those revolutions (as did many other people I suppose).
    - capisce 13y ago
      Money is not a powerful motivator when it comes to innovation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Abo... Money is still a motivator when it comes to getting unrewarding work done, but basic income incentivizes work in a way that a welfare that only gets paid when you're unemployed does not.
- jswinghammer 13y ago
  1. would probably work better in a basic income world because in theory the resulting boom and bust cycle would cause less distress because people would have something more to fall back on. Eventually this has to end but in the long run we'll all be dead anyway. 2. is unlikely because no one wants to pay for anything. This whole idea is a very naive scheme to try to solve the obvious problem with welfare that there are large groups of productive people who pay for those who are not. It creates a great deal of anger in the productive group so if you can mitigate that anger then maybe you can continue your welfare schemes. I'm going to guess that this basic income would not entirely replace welfare programs. I find it so interesting that there are so many things being proposed by people entirely ignorant of political economy and contradictory to the most basic understanding of the profession. Between this and this recent minimum wage increase nonsense it seems like we're hell bent on just saying "To hell with what econ 101 says, this sounds good to me!" I keep hoping that the adults show up and just start ignoring all this and letting everyone know they're being ignored. I suspect that will not happen in this case. It never has before.
  - thenmar 13y ago
    Really? Do you really think everyone on welfare, or even a majority, are just lazy poor people living off the money earned by the glorious, noble, hard-working, libertarian class? Is it really that simple?
    - jswinghammer 13y ago
      Of course not. They're just people responding to incentives to make the best choices they can. I don't judge anyone on welfare or not.
      - thenmar 13y ago
        I think this "poor people are dumb animals and if we stopped giving the money they'd go get jobs" attitude is super fucked up.
    - baddox 13y ago
- jmillikin 13y ago
  Top earners have a strong vested interest in the lowest possible income not being too low, because starving homeless masses have a negative impact on property values. The question is not whether to redistribute income, but how much and by which mechanism. Inflation is income redistribution also, remember. The traditional income redistribution systems in the US are social security (from the young to the old), welfare (from the employed to the unemployed), and medicare (from the healthy to the unhealthy). The cost of these systems is $X + $Y + $Z. Costs are inflated by large bureaucracies put in place to enforce social mores as punitive measures against the poor ("piss in this cup or you don't get EBT this month"; "EBT is for buying cheez-puffs, not condoms"). If giving $X + $Y + $Z to everyone in the US would provide them with a better quality of life, then it makes sense to do that instead of managing separate programs. Two significant additional benefits to a basic income are: 1. It fixes the problem of going from unemployed to employed-at-minimum-wage resulting in a net decrease in household income. It's a simple observation that punishing people for getting a job will decrease the total number of employed adults. 2. It enables the minimum wage to be much lower than the poverty line. The nation has collectively decided that an adult working full time should be entitled to to the basic necessities of life, and the cost of that decision is that jobs which are worth less than $7.25 simply aren't offered (or are only offered illegally). If everyone already makes enough to get by, then there's far fewer ethical problems with paying someone $3 an hour to sweep some floors or pick up garbage from a sidewalk.
  - jswinghammer 13y ago
    Inflation is a redistribution scheme of the poor to the rich and from savings to spenders. Life becomes a lot simpler when we just eliminate all these schemes and just let people solve problems for themselves. This expectation that you can disrupt the economy in a major way and have the rest of the society stay static around me is a very serious reasoning error.
    - jmillikin 13y ago
      > Inflation is a redistribution scheme of the poor to the > rich and from savings to spenders. Technically, from those with monetary savings to those with non-monetary savings. Inflation will strike someone with $1,000,000 in the bank much harder than someone with a stash of precious metal, large property holdings, or industrial equipment. The hardest hit are individuals who have accumulated wealth but are not skilled enough at managing it (e.g. retirees living on an immediate annuity). Inflation doesn't have much effect on the poor, because income tends to increase along with the cost of consumer goods.
- psbp 13y ago
  Read this article instead: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/rethinking-the-idea-of-a-basic-income-for-all/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/rethinking-the-... The idea is to remove the current welfare system and replace it with basic income.
  - xname 13y ago
    No. It is impossible. What will happen is add basic income on top of current welfare system. Read: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right? Most people I've talked to about BI begin and end that part of the discussion with something that boils down to "somewhere, but not me"
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Peg the BI amount to targeted inflation, not to actual (or projected) inflation. If fewer people are interested in working, labor commands more value, and work becomes more desirable. There is no race to the bottom; it's self correcting, not a downward spiral.
- legutierr 13y ago
  > Where does wealth come from if nobody works? If you didn't have to work for money, what would you do? Would you spend more time with your kids? Would you take your parents out of the nursing home and care for them yourself? Would you spend more time with your signifiant other? Would you return to music or painting, which you abandoned when you had to enter the "real world" and earn a living? Would you go back to school, to pursue the academic interests you earlier had to set aside to focus on something that had good job prospects? Would you volunteer more often, or get politically involved trying to fix issues you don't have time to worry about right now? Would you exercise more, and play sports more often? Would you spend more time cooking, and cut back on prepared, unhealthy foods? Would you sleep seven hours a day, instead of five? Would you quit your job and start the company that you always wanted to, and steer it in the direction you wanted, working with the people that you wanted to, without thinking twice about what potential investors might think? Would you move into the career that you always dreamed of as a kid, but that just didn't pay enough? Would you take more risks? Would you worry less about failure, and work harder on those things that you are passionate about? Or would you just laze around on the couch in your cramped apartment watching TV and eating ice-cream all day? Of course, it must be this last option, because what else would anyone ever do if they had the choice not to work? Of course, without the fear of abject deprivation as a motivator, no one would ever do any work, and no one ever has.
  - thisosound 13y ago
    You underestimate how lazy humans get if they don't have discipline and/or pressure.
    - icelancer 13y ago
      For a given number of them, yes. Who cares?
    - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
      Those people are already not working. So, instead of spending more on officials and offices and paperwork determining if they can have welfare or not, let's just give them the money directly.
- rayiner 13y ago
  There's an interesting conceptual tension in your post: High performers like to believe that they're entitled to the vast majority of the country's income because they're responsible for the vast majority of the wealth creation. Thus they see high taxes as "punishment" for success. But if that's true, why does it matter if say the bottom 40% of income earners just stop working. They account for only about 10% of the nations income, and presumably if the market compensates people fairly production would decrease by only 10% or less if these people stopped working.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Also related to the hilarity of "going Galt". Nice post.
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    Incredible post.
  - jotm 13y ago
    Bottom 40% are responsible for maintenance - without them there can be no production (i.e. they're vital). It's not easy to write code or work on 3D printers when your toilet is clogged and there are no people unloading trucks at the local stores :-)
- pkulak 13y ago
  > how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works? Work still needs to be done. BI means that you can get rid of the minimum wage and labor becomes worth what it takes to get someone to do it knowing that their life and the lives of their families doesn't depend on it. Maybe that shitty job at McDonalds now takes $20 an hour to fill? Maybe that increases automation, making the economy more efficient. It might also increase the cost of crappy food, pushing more people to just prepare their own food; but now they have the time to do it, so no big deal. We don't have a problem in this country with laziness. We don't have enough jobs for everyone who wants to work to work. We've set a requirement of 40-hours a week just to live, and then we don't actually have that much work available. We need to find a way to remove that 40-hour requirement. The economy is just too efficient.
smokeyj 13y ago
I'm in favor of free ponies and ice cream. Maybe I should blog about it.
- stefan_kendall 13y ago
  Socialist reductionism always works for me, although never as I expect. "Health is important. Doctors should be free, right?" - Yes. "But what about housing?! People can't just freeze to death. So housing should be universally free for everyone, right?" - Yes. "Clothing is just as important as housing. Clothing?" - Yes. "And food? You can't live without food. Universal free food?" - Yes. "And without access to technology, you can't get a job, so surely the government should provide computers and phones. Otherwise people have no chance of rising out of poverty. Universal technology?" - Yes. I'm pretty sure no one has ever gotten the point, and I've only turned half-hearted socialists into full-blown socialists. Oh well.
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    Yes, yes, no because clothing is affordable and not gone after a single use, yes, no but internet should be a utility and libraries should have computers available. Am I too socialist?
yc-kjh 13y ago
The author is an economic idiot. Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time. http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts Read Bradford’s description (in the article linked above) about what socialism did to the Pilgrims: it created poverty, envy, and slothfulness. Many of them died as a result. Prosperity only returned when they re-introduced private property. I suspect the author is well meaning, but he is ignorant. His "solution" will create misery. I hope he educates himself, then changes his mind.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- legutierr 13y ago
  Basic Income is not Communism. Communism is state control of the means of production, and centralized planning of the entire economy. Whether Basic Income is Socialism depends on your definition of Socialism. If you go by the definition found on wikipedia, which I think is pretty standard, BI is not Socialism either. [1] Basic Income is redistributive, but so is the US tax system, as it has been for nearly 100 years. It is a more aggressive and explicit redistribution scheme, but it is not of an entirely dissimilar nature, nor is it incompatible with free-market capitalism. So regardless of one's opinion of Socialism and Communism, whether or not socialism and communism typically fail has no bearing on whether a basic income would be successful, because they are different things. However, when you say: > Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time. You should consider that the vast majority of the world's large economies are described as "mixed economies" that combine elements of socialism and laissez faire capitalism. Many, if not most of these have been mixed--combining Socialist and Capitalist policies in one way or another--for decades, if not for more than a century. So, unless you are going to assert that the modern economic order is a "failure", I think you should rethink this sentiment. > The author is an economic idiot. Strong words probably not best used in this situation. If "redistribution" of economic surplus (i.e. profit/income) is a feature of Communism and Socialism, it is not the most important feature of these ideologies, which concern themselves with limiting or eliminating private property. In fact, I would assert that redistribution is a specifically Capitalist response to the Socialist critique of private property and markets: it is a way to reduce economic injustice by focusing entirely on the distribution of surplus, while leaving private property at the core of the economic system, and while also relying on markets to determine prices and the appropriate allocation of investment. [1] "Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
jseliger 13y ago
Basic income will serve to reinforce this fabric and enable the risky ventures that will power us forward in the 21st century. Maybe. But for an alternative view, see "Four Reasons a Guaranteed Annual Income Won't Work" (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guaranteed-income-won-t-work.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guar...) and, although not strictly an alternative view, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...). As so often happens, the devil is in the implementation and incentive details. Based on my reading I think a guaranteed annual income is a good idea, but I'm agnostic on the question of whether a guaranteed annual income would work in practice.
xname 13y ago
Obviously, 21 is a magic number, all the proposals in the article are simply based on "the 21st century". Because it is the 21st century, so freedom is free. Done.
- zxcdw 13y ago
  Because this will be the century when AI and robotics(automation) can be more cost-effective than a "big enough" proportition of human labour. What this means, is that at some point it is simply better to invest in machinery(automation) than employment. Eventually AI will surpass human capabilities in every domain where any sort of intelligence matters. It's inevitable, given exponential progress. Whether that "eventually" is next decade or next century is irrelevant(or whether it's a tailored weak AI or an universal true strong AI) -- what is relevant is that aforementioned "big enough" proportition of people, and AI(and automation) will surpass them well enough to be competitive against humans far sooner. Somebody has to deal with this, somehow. Basic income guarante could be a solution -- automation can produce enough for people to live off well enough.
  - xname 13y ago
    The author's argument is now, not "eventually".
KaoruAoiShiho 13y ago
Maybe a more palatable way to spinfund basic income / progressive taxing is not to tax the wealthy but to tax robotics / AI. Increasingly productivity gains will come from robotics anyway. Taxes like this should have close to the same effects as progressive taxes but seem less leftist. It would look more like an evitable human progression to the voter base instead of sneaking socialism.
mwc 13y ago
An economic analysis on a proposed minimum income model for New Zealand:[0] The [basis minimum income] scheme proposed by the Welfare Working Group is a significant policy change with large economic consequences. The scheme is fiscally very costly and would not necessarily achieve its main goal of reducing poverty. The high personal tax rates required to fund the scheme are highly distortionary to the labour market and to savings and investment decisions, and would be likely to induce a significant behavioural response. This has damaging effects on the tax system and economic growth. Also of importance, from the same report: Although the Gini coefficient improves under all models, many beneficiaries (including the disabled, carers and sole parents) currently receive more than $300 per week and would be made financially worse off under a GMI scheme. At a high level, it seems that the economic reality of providing a basic minimum income to everyone requires a significant increase in taxation revenue. That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita, but I'm not certain we're there yet. [0] http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury-A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor... Edit: formatting.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita That's actually a really interesting point. The feasibility of BI is going to be tied to GDP per capita, as well as cost of living. In a country where GDP-per-capita is several times cost of living, BI would be relatively easy, whereas a country where GDP-per-capita is barely above cost of living, BI would be very difficult (because where do you come up with the money?) US GDP per capita is about $50k. I'm not sure what cost of living is, but that definitely isn't a whole lot higher than what is usually accepted as the threshold to living somewhat comfortably (somewhere around $40k) Norway, on the other hand, has a USD GDP per capita of ~$100k, so unless cost of living is much higher, BI may be much more feasible there.
orionblastar 13y ago
First off I myself am on disability, not by choice but because I became mentally ill due to the stress I was under at my job. Startup burnout or whatever. Secondly, I'd much rather be working a job than be on disability, but I wasn't given a choice because my doctors had ordered it. I wasn't given a choice because employers discriminated against me for my disability/mental illness and either called me 'overqualified' or refused to hire me or only hired me to fix things and then fire me when the things are fixed. I've been trying to do my own startup since 2002 when I lost my last job. No money for me anywhere. I would have less stress with my own small business and small circle of clients than in a large greedy megacorpration that cares more about profits at any cost than people or anything else. I think instead of basic income, we should give money to the small business administration to give people lessons in business management and programming or whatever to do their own startups. The SBA has a lot of volunteers who can mentor people into starting up a successful business. The real problem for people down on their luck like me is finding the money to do a startup while on disability or little or no income. I read articles about giving some random homeless guy money and programming training, and then he has an app in the app store for iPhones. Why don't we just do that for all of the poor people out there? Everyone can write their own app, get training and support, and get some startup funding and see if it works out they can have their own small business. If not, well at least you tried. This basic income is not freedom, it is slavery to force one out of the market and no longer be productive or do anything for society. I can just see people dropping out of high school in large numbers to stay at home with their parents, avoid taking a job, just apply for basic income and get that low income AT&T DSL Internet for $15/month and play video games on a cheap PC or used Playstation or used XBox for the rest of their lives and never contribute anything for the betterment their lives and help out others. Altruism is great, but most of it is fake altruism for attention or good PR or to pay for past sins of getting rich at the expense of others and make a foundation that does charitable things that buys products from their businesses and provides a tax shelter and then gives them awards. True altruism is doing things to help out others, and mentor them, and teach them to become better and also help out others and keep passing it on, with no personal rewards and no good PR and no attention, just doing it for the empathy and compassion. But so few people do true altruism these days, only the fake altruism. I think that it takes more than to just give someone money as a basic income, you need to give them an education, train them, mentor them, help them reach a level of success so they can become independent and then in turn help out others to do the same as people once helped them.
downandout 13y ago
The primary issue with our economy is that each dollar one has makes it easier to obtain the next dollar. If you play that out to its only possible conclusion, you wind up with all of the money in very few hands. Somehow, that money has to go back into circulation, in the form of loans, grants, charity, salaries, etc. or our economy simply won't be an economy anymore. It has never been the role of government in a capitalist society to hand out money, nor should it be. Government's role is to create a legislative structure that incentivizes behavior that leads to a healthy economy and society. If we have a problem with the stockpiling of wealth, then we need to craft new laws that disincentivize that behavior. Something needs to change, but it doesn't involve firing up the money presses.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gnaritas 13y ago
  Governments role is whatever its citizens decide it should be. There are no absolute rules. Every generation makes that decision for themselves.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  These two paragraphs seem at odds. Taxing the accumulation of wealth and distributing the results seems an effective way of disincentivizing the behavior and putting the money "back into circulation", and doesn't involve any money presses.
ctdonath 13y ago
I've long observed that the core problem with free open source software is that there is no incentive to do the small percentage of things which really do need doing and which nobody has any incentive to do (see the classic problem of crappy video & audio drivers, among other such issues) short of one thing: MONEY. "Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Give people that money outright, and nobody will do those jobs for it. Oh, a few people might pitch in, but nowhere on the scale needed. BI romanticized the notion that most people will be productive contributors to society given free coverage of necessities. This is never objectively quantified in favor of the notion ... which history records various attempts at, with a great many people suffering horribly in the process of forcing it to work. Oh, these are always excused as "did it wrong, we'll do it right" with no objective reason to believe the optimism. Sure, some people will do good with their free money - but who's gonna do those dirty jobs? not you, you don't have time for it as you pursue more productive occupations, paying others to do so you don't have to.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  >"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Basic income does not mean everybody does their jobs for free.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Basic income means nobody is in a position where they will do menial work which nobody else will. Paying more for those jobs means competing with like-paying jobs of a far more desirable character. You ready for custodial labor to cost several times more? suddenly employers can't spend nearly as much for more advanced work because basic sanitation (and other menial but needed work) is suddenly far more costly.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Basic income means nobody is in a position where they will do menial work which nobody else will. This unsubstantiated assumption is the problem with your argument.
charlieflowers 13y ago
In the US (and I presume most 1st world countries), we're pretty thoroughly (and intentionally) infected with Consumerism. People who are making $150,000 are not content, and are working 60-hour weeks to get that raise up to $160,000. And the same thing is happening with people making $500,000 or $50,000. All of those salaries produce MORE than enough to live comfortably on. And many people with a good salary could -- if they so chose -- live on $40,000 and save like crazy, and retire very early (as preached by Mr. Money Mustache among others). But ALMOST NO ONE DOES THAT. So what logical basis is there to assume that Basic Income would change this? Many people already have Basic Income plus a whole lot more, but they don't pursue a basic secure position. Rather, they spend all they make (and often more), and they work slavishly to get more income. (Is Basic Income meant to help the poor and unemployed ... who don't have the "good salary" I mention above? If so, I'm all for it, but it seems to me that if the price of a slum apartment is $300/month before Basic Income, it will merely be $600/month -- or whatever scale factor it takes to soak up that extra income -- after it.)
- dllthomas 13y ago
  That's much of the point. If people want to feel useful and most people want to be paid to feel useful, then only a few will opt out - hopefully in favor of something that means more to them - leaving space for those who can't and/or won't.

69 points by samsolomon 13y ago

kaoD 13y ago

The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right? I can think of two choices: 1. Creating money from air, thus driving price inflation. 2. Redistributing income, where the top earners would have to pay for the ones which choose to just enjoy their basic income. I haven't really dug into basic income proponents' argument and the article misses the point (which IMHO is the real important point, of course basic income would be awesome). How does it hold economically? Inflation or punishing top performers seem like a really bad idea. And sociologically... how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works?

jacalata 13y ago
Where do open source programs come from if nobody is paid for them?
- kaoD 13y ago
  Altruism? Many open source projects have paid contributors anyways.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    Yes, among other reasons such as solving a problem for themselves or enjoyment of the process. The point is that financial motivation doesn't even explain all the production in the economy right now, so obviously removing the financial motive won't remove all production. And a basic income doesn't imply no financial motivation anyway, how many investment bankers and programmers quit their job yesterday because they already have enough savings to eat and live in a crappy sharehouse for the rest of their lives?
- wyager 13y ago
  Making open source projects is fun. Flipping burgers and cleaning toilets isn't. And believe it or not, people do pay for open-source programs. It's just not necessarily the end user.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    People clean toilets without being paid... just not typically other people's toilets.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Have you ever looked at the breakdown of who writes the Linux kernel? It's mostly maintained by corporations, notably companies like Red Hat and strangely enough even Microsoft.
kiba 13y ago
And sociologically... how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works? Robots, and higher wages for those who works.
- wyager 13y ago
  Because taxing high earners will magically make the necessary technology appear.
  - cookingrobot 13y ago
    The magic middle step is that the job market would decide that crappy jobs need to pay a lot more. This would make it reasonable to invest in robots where it doesn't make sense today. One we make a few decades of progress on that front, I would expect the robots get so cheap that it's overall more efficient than we are today. In other words it would be the kick we need to get out of this local maxima of enjoying the benefits of cheap labor, and would end at a much better/more efficient/less abusive system.
joelrunyon 13y ago
> how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? What if your work didn't have to suck? What if you could actually work, create something useful and enjoy it? I don't understand why people think this is such an impossible concept.
- hobs 13y ago
  Its not an impossible concept, but most people's workplaces suck to varying degrees. Unless you are a highly valued "knowledge worker" you will find that you life has a large component of drudgery.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    To me that is an argument in favor of basic income: it would force workplaces to suck less, since they'd have competition at the bottom end.
- kaoD 13y ago
  Most people would rather work in whatever they want than working for a wage for someone else's benefit. Even if they find their job rewarding, being told what and when to do something is not as rewarding as... not being. Also: what about highly unrewarding jobs?
  - hedning 13y ago
    Well, if no one would work the unrewarding jobs, and they were needed. The wages for these jobs would go up. As Bertrand Russell said there's two types of jobs. "The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid". Reversing this might not be the worst thing in the world.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      And/or they'll be automated (or at least sufficiently automated).
  - 13y ago
Retric 13y ago
The incentives for wealth redistribution are vary simple. You hand over a fixed percentage of money to the poor and they don't steal from you or end up in prison. The idea being while many poor people will not steal the overhead from those that do is high enough that it's worth a lot. As to basic income vs. other forms of welfare it's more money directly but far lower overhead. Which means people that are capable of finding productive jobs are adding to the economy vs. varying unemployment information etc. On top of that some people will simply take more risks which has a huge upside vs. unemployment where you can't get the money if your starting up your working for your self so people watch TV vs building an App. Socially, money is a huge motivator. Most collage educated people could get by working 1/2 what they do but the 20 hour work week or taking 6 months off a year did not take off instead people buy 5$ coffee at Starbucks etc. PS: And yes the poor can be a lot more disruptive than you might think just look at say the french revolution or any of the communist revolutions.
- jswinghammer 13y ago
  That's basically all nonsense. If I have money and really feel like the poor are going to take it then I can buy security or just move far out into the country. Rich people were far less secretive in the past than they are now (for a variety of reasons). If a basic income means that I can support myself without work and have a decent living then I'm probably not working-it's pretty simple. I suspect you'd have fewer apps being built, manual labor getting done, tough problems getting solved, etc. And if I can't then why are we bothering again? The communist revolutions of the past tended to be largely nationalist in their roots. The poor ended up being terribly harmed by those revolutions (as did many other people I suppose).
  - capisce 13y ago
    Money is not a powerful motivator when it comes to innovation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Abo... Money is still a motivator when it comes to getting unrewarding work done, but basic income incentivizes work in a way that a welfare that only gets paid when you're unemployed does not.
jswinghammer 13y ago
1. would probably work better in a basic income world because in theory the resulting boom and bust cycle would cause less distress because people would have something more to fall back on. Eventually this has to end but in the long run we'll all be dead anyway. 2. is unlikely because no one wants to pay for anything. This whole idea is a very naive scheme to try to solve the obvious problem with welfare that there are large groups of productive people who pay for those who are not. It creates a great deal of anger in the productive group so if you can mitigate that anger then maybe you can continue your welfare schemes. I'm going to guess that this basic income would not entirely replace welfare programs. I find it so interesting that there are so many things being proposed by people entirely ignorant of political economy and contradictory to the most basic understanding of the profession. Between this and this recent minimum wage increase nonsense it seems like we're hell bent on just saying "To hell with what econ 101 says, this sounds good to me!" I keep hoping that the adults show up and just start ignoring all this and letting everyone know they're being ignored. I suspect that will not happen in this case. It never has before.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Really? Do you really think everyone on welfare, or even a majority, are just lazy poor people living off the money earned by the glorious, noble, hard-working, libertarian class? Is it really that simple?
  - jswinghammer 13y ago
    Of course not. They're just people responding to incentives to make the best choices they can. I don't judge anyone on welfare or not.
    - thenmar 13y ago
      I think this "poor people are dumb animals and if we stopped giving the money they'd go get jobs" attitude is super fucked up.
  - baddox 13y ago
jmillikin 13y ago
Top earners have a strong vested interest in the lowest possible income not being too low, because starving homeless masses have a negative impact on property values. The question is not whether to redistribute income, but how much and by which mechanism. Inflation is income redistribution also, remember. The traditional income redistribution systems in the US are social security (from the young to the old), welfare (from the employed to the unemployed), and medicare (from the healthy to the unhealthy). The cost of these systems is $X + $Y + $Z. Costs are inflated by large bureaucracies put in place to enforce social mores as punitive measures against the poor ("piss in this cup or you don't get EBT this month"; "EBT is for buying cheez-puffs, not condoms"). If giving $X + $Y + $Z to everyone in the US would provide them with a better quality of life, then it makes sense to do that instead of managing separate programs. Two significant additional benefits to a basic income are: 1. It fixes the problem of going from unemployed to employed-at-minimum-wage resulting in a net decrease in household income. It's a simple observation that punishing people for getting a job will decrease the total number of employed adults. 2. It enables the minimum wage to be much lower than the poverty line. The nation has collectively decided that an adult working full time should be entitled to to the basic necessities of life, and the cost of that decision is that jobs which are worth less than $7.25 simply aren't offered (or are only offered illegally). If everyone already makes enough to get by, then there's far fewer ethical problems with paying someone $3 an hour to sweep some floors or pick up garbage from a sidewalk.
- jswinghammer 13y ago
  Inflation is a redistribution scheme of the poor to the rich and from savings to spenders. Life becomes a lot simpler when we just eliminate all these schemes and just let people solve problems for themselves. This expectation that you can disrupt the economy in a major way and have the rest of the society stay static around me is a very serious reasoning error.
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    > Inflation is a redistribution scheme of the poor to the > rich and from savings to spenders. Technically, from those with monetary savings to those with non-monetary savings. Inflation will strike someone with $1,000,000 in the bank much harder than someone with a stash of precious metal, large property holdings, or industrial equipment. The hardest hit are individuals who have accumulated wealth but are not skilled enough at managing it (e.g. retirees living on an immediate annuity). Inflation doesn't have much effect on the poor, because income tends to increase along with the cost of consumer goods.
psbp 13y ago
Read this article instead: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/rethinking-the-idea-of-a-basic-income-for-all/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/rethinking-the-... The idea is to remove the current welfare system and replace it with basic income.
- xname 13y ago
  No. It is impossible. What will happen is add basic income on top of current welfare system. Read: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
sliverstorm 13y ago
The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right? Most people I've talked to about BI begin and end that part of the discussion with something that boils down to "somewhere, but not me"
dllthomas 13y ago
Peg the BI amount to targeted inflation, not to actual (or projected) inflation. If fewer people are interested in working, labor commands more value, and work becomes more desirable. There is no race to the bottom; it's self correcting, not a downward spiral.
legutierr 13y ago
> Where does wealth come from if nobody works? If you didn't have to work for money, what would you do? Would you spend more time with your kids? Would you take your parents out of the nursing home and care for them yourself? Would you spend more time with your signifiant other? Would you return to music or painting, which you abandoned when you had to enter the "real world" and earn a living? Would you go back to school, to pursue the academic interests you earlier had to set aside to focus on something that had good job prospects? Would you volunteer more often, or get politically involved trying to fix issues you don't have time to worry about right now? Would you exercise more, and play sports more often? Would you spend more time cooking, and cut back on prepared, unhealthy foods? Would you sleep seven hours a day, instead of five? Would you quit your job and start the company that you always wanted to, and steer it in the direction you wanted, working with the people that you wanted to, without thinking twice about what potential investors might think? Would you move into the career that you always dreamed of as a kid, but that just didn't pay enough? Would you take more risks? Would you worry less about failure, and work harder on those things that you are passionate about? Or would you just laze around on the couch in your cramped apartment watching TV and eating ice-cream all day? Of course, it must be this last option, because what else would anyone ever do if they had the choice not to work? Of course, without the fear of abject deprivation as a motivator, no one would ever do any work, and no one ever has.
- thisosound 13y ago
  You underestimate how lazy humans get if they don't have discipline and/or pressure.
  - icelancer 13y ago
    For a given number of them, yes. Who cares?
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    Those people are already not working. So, instead of spending more on officials and offices and paperwork determining if they can have welfare or not, let's just give them the money directly.
rayiner 13y ago
There's an interesting conceptual tension in your post: High performers like to believe that they're entitled to the vast majority of the country's income because they're responsible for the vast majority of the wealth creation. Thus they see high taxes as "punishment" for success. But if that's true, why does it matter if say the bottom 40% of income earners just stop working. They account for only about 10% of the nations income, and presumably if the market compensates people fairly production would decrease by only 10% or less if these people stopped working.
- eropple 13y ago
  Also related to the hilarity of "going Galt". Nice post.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  Incredible post.
- jotm 13y ago
  Bottom 40% are responsible for maintenance - without them there can be no production (i.e. they're vital). It's not easy to write code or work on 3D printers when your toilet is clogged and there are no people unloading trucks at the local stores :-)
pkulak 13y ago
> how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works? Work still needs to be done. BI means that you can get rid of the minimum wage and labor becomes worth what it takes to get someone to do it knowing that their life and the lives of their families doesn't depend on it. Maybe that shitty job at McDonalds now takes $20 an hour to fill? Maybe that increases automation, making the economy more efficient. It might also increase the cost of crappy food, pushing more people to just prepare their own food; but now they have the time to do it, so no big deal. We don't have a problem in this country with laziness. We don't have enough jobs for everyone who wants to work to work. We've set a requirement of 40-hours a week just to live, and then we don't actually have that much work available. We need to find a way to remove that 40-hour requirement. The economy is just too efficient.

smokeyj 13y ago

I'm in favor of free ponies and ice cream. Maybe I should blog about it.

stefan_kendall 13y ago
Socialist reductionism always works for me, although never as I expect. "Health is important. Doctors should be free, right?" - Yes. "But what about housing?! People can't just freeze to death. So housing should be universally free for everyone, right?" - Yes. "Clothing is just as important as housing. Clothing?" - Yes. "And food? You can't live without food. Universal free food?" - Yes. "And without access to technology, you can't get a job, so surely the government should provide computers and phones. Otherwise people have no chance of rising out of poverty. Universal technology?" - Yes. I'm pretty sure no one has ever gotten the point, and I've only turned half-hearted socialists into full-blown socialists. Oh well.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  Yes, yes, no because clothing is affordable and not gone after a single use, yes, no but internet should be a utility and libraries should have computers available. Am I too socialist?

yc-kjh 13y ago

The author is an economic idiot. Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time. http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts Read Bradford’s description (in the article linked above) about what socialism did to the Pilgrims: it created poverty, envy, and slothfulness. Many of them died as a result. Prosperity only returned when they re-introduced private property. I suspect the author is well meaning, but he is ignorant. His "solution" will create misery. I hope he educates himself, then changes his mind.

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legutierr 13y ago
Basic Income is not Communism. Communism is state control of the means of production, and centralized planning of the entire economy. Whether Basic Income is Socialism depends on your definition of Socialism. If you go by the definition found on wikipedia, which I think is pretty standard, BI is not Socialism either. [1] Basic Income is redistributive, but so is the US tax system, as it has been for nearly 100 years. It is a more aggressive and explicit redistribution scheme, but it is not of an entirely dissimilar nature, nor is it incompatible with free-market capitalism. So regardless of one's opinion of Socialism and Communism, whether or not socialism and communism typically fail has no bearing on whether a basic income would be successful, because they are different things. However, when you say: > Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time. You should consider that the vast majority of the world's large economies are described as "mixed economies" that combine elements of socialism and laissez faire capitalism. Many, if not most of these have been mixed--combining Socialist and Capitalist policies in one way or another--for decades, if not for more than a century. So, unless you are going to assert that the modern economic order is a "failure", I think you should rethink this sentiment. > The author is an economic idiot. Strong words probably not best used in this situation. If "redistribution" of economic surplus (i.e. profit/income) is a feature of Communism and Socialism, it is not the most important feature of these ideologies, which concern themselves with limiting or eliminating private property. In fact, I would assert that redistribution is a specifically Capitalist response to the Socialist critique of private property and markets: it is a way to reduce economic injustice by focusing entirely on the distribution of surplus, while leaving private property at the core of the economic system, and while also relying on markets to determine prices and the appropriate allocation of investment. [1] "Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

jseliger 13y ago

Basic income will serve to reinforce this fabric and enable the risky ventures that will power us forward in the 21st century. Maybe. But for an alternative view, see "Four Reasons a Guaranteed Annual Income Won't Work" (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guaranteed-income-won-t-work.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guar...) and, although not strictly an alternative view, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...). As so often happens, the devil is in the implementation and incentive details. Based on my reading I think a guaranteed annual income is a good idea, but I'm agnostic on the question of whether a guaranteed annual income would work in practice.

xname 13y ago

Obviously, 21 is a magic number, all the proposals in the article are simply based on "the 21st century". Because it is the 21st century, so freedom is free. Done.

zxcdw 13y ago
Because this will be the century when AI and robotics(automation) can be more cost-effective than a "big enough" proportition of human labour. What this means, is that at some point it is simply better to invest in machinery(automation) than employment. Eventually AI will surpass human capabilities in every domain where any sort of intelligence matters. It's inevitable, given exponential progress. Whether that "eventually" is next decade or next century is irrelevant(or whether it's a tailored weak AI or an universal true strong AI) -- what is relevant is that aforementioned "big enough" proportition of people, and AI(and automation) will surpass them well enough to be competitive against humans far sooner. Somebody has to deal with this, somehow. Basic income guarante could be a solution -- automation can produce enough for people to live off well enough.
- xname 13y ago
  The author's argument is now, not "eventually".

KaoruAoiShiho 13y ago

Maybe a more palatable way to spinfund basic income / progressive taxing is not to tax the wealthy but to tax robotics / AI. Increasingly productivity gains will come from robotics anyway. Taxes like this should have close to the same effects as progressive taxes but seem less leftist. It would look more like an evitable human progression to the voter base instead of sneaking socialism.

mwc 13y ago

An economic analysis on a proposed minimum income model for New Zealand:[0] The [basis minimum income] scheme proposed by the Welfare Working Group is a significant policy change with large economic consequences. The scheme is fiscally very costly and would not necessarily achieve its main goal of reducing poverty. The high personal tax rates required to fund the scheme are highly distortionary to the labour market and to savings and investment decisions, and would be likely to induce a significant behavioural response. This has damaging effects on the tax system and economic growth. Also of importance, from the same report: Although the Gini coefficient improves under all models, many beneficiaries (including the disabled, carers and sole parents) currently receive more than $300 per week and would be made financially worse off under a GMI scheme. At a high level, it seems that the economic reality of providing a basic minimum income to everyone requires a significant increase in taxation revenue. That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita, but I'm not certain we're there yet. [0] http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury-A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor... Edit: formatting.

sliverstorm 13y ago
That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita That's actually a really interesting point. The feasibility of BI is going to be tied to GDP per capita, as well as cost of living. In a country where GDP-per-capita is several times cost of living, BI would be relatively easy, whereas a country where GDP-per-capita is barely above cost of living, BI would be very difficult (because where do you come up with the money?) US GDP per capita is about $50k. I'm not sure what cost of living is, but that definitely isn't a whole lot higher than what is usually accepted as the threshold to living somewhat comfortably (somewhere around $40k) Norway, on the other hand, has a USD GDP per capita of ~$100k, so unless cost of living is much higher, BI may be much more feasible there.

orionblastar 13y ago

First off I myself am on disability, not by choice but because I became mentally ill due to the stress I was under at my job. Startup burnout or whatever. Secondly, I'd much rather be working a job than be on disability, but I wasn't given a choice because my doctors had ordered it. I wasn't given a choice because employers discriminated against me for my disability/mental illness and either called me 'overqualified' or refused to hire me or only hired me to fix things and then fire me when the things are fixed. I've been trying to do my own startup since 2002 when I lost my last job. No money for me anywhere. I would have less stress with my own small business and small circle of clients than in a large greedy megacorpration that cares more about profits at any cost than people or anything else. I think instead of basic income, we should give money to the small business administration to give people lessons in business management and programming or whatever to do their own startups. The SBA has a lot of volunteers who can mentor people into starting up a successful business. The real problem for people down on their luck like me is finding the money to do a startup while on disability or little or no income. I read articles about giving some random homeless guy money and programming training, and then he has an app in the app store for iPhones. Why don't we just do that for all of the poor people out there? Everyone can write their own app, get training and support, and get some startup funding and see if it works out they can have their own small business. If not, well at least you tried. This basic income is not freedom, it is slavery to force one out of the market and no longer be productive or do anything for society. I can just see people dropping out of high school in large numbers to stay at home with their parents, avoid taking a job, just apply for basic income and get that low income AT&T DSL Internet for $15/month and play video games on a cheap PC or used Playstation or used XBox for the rest of their lives and never contribute anything for the betterment their lives and help out others. Altruism is great, but most of it is fake altruism for attention or good PR or to pay for past sins of getting rich at the expense of others and make a foundation that does charitable things that buys products from their businesses and provides a tax shelter and then gives them awards. True altruism is doing things to help out others, and mentor them, and teach them to become better and also help out others and keep passing it on, with no personal rewards and no good PR and no attention, just doing it for the empathy and compassion. But so few people do true altruism these days, only the fake altruism. I think that it takes more than to just give someone money as a basic income, you need to give them an education, train them, mentor them, help them reach a level of success so they can become independent and then in turn help out others to do the same as people once helped them.

downandout 13y ago

The primary issue with our economy is that each dollar one has makes it easier to obtain the next dollar. If you play that out to its only possible conclusion, you wind up with all of the money in very few hands. Somehow, that money has to go back into circulation, in the form of loans, grants, charity, salaries, etc. or our economy simply won't be an economy anymore. It has never been the role of government in a capitalist society to hand out money, nor should it be. Government's role is to create a legislative structure that incentivizes behavior that leads to a healthy economy and society. If we have a problem with the stockpiling of wealth, then we need to craft new laws that disincentivize that behavior. Something needs to change, but it doesn't involve firing up the money presses.

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gnaritas 13y ago
Governments role is whatever its citizens decide it should be. There are no absolute rules. Every generation makes that decision for themselves.
dllthomas 13y ago
These two paragraphs seem at odds. Taxing the accumulation of wealth and distributing the results seems an effective way of disincentivizing the behavior and putting the money "back into circulation", and doesn't involve any money presses.

ctdonath 13y ago

I've long observed that the core problem with free open source software is that there is no incentive to do the small percentage of things which really do need doing and which nobody has any incentive to do (see the classic problem of crappy video & audio drivers, among other such issues) short of one thing: MONEY. "Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Give people that money outright, and nobody will do those jobs for it. Oh, a few people might pitch in, but nowhere on the scale needed. BI romanticized the notion that most people will be productive contributors to society given free coverage of necessities. This is never objectively quantified in favor of the notion ... which history records various attempts at, with a great many people suffering horribly in the process of forcing it to work. Oh, these are always excused as "did it wrong, we'll do it right" with no objective reason to believe the optimism. Sure, some people will do good with their free money - but who's gonna do those dirty jobs? not you, you don't have time for it as you pursue more productive occupations, paying others to do so you don't have to.

crdoconnor 13y ago
>"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Basic income does not mean everybody does their jobs for free.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Basic income means nobody is in a position where they will do menial work which nobody else will. Paying more for those jobs means competing with like-paying jobs of a far more desirable character. You ready for custodial labor to cost several times more? suddenly employers can't spend nearly as much for more advanced work because basic sanitation (and other menial but needed work) is suddenly far more costly.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Basic income means nobody is in a position where they will do menial work which nobody else will. This unsubstantiated assumption is the problem with your argument.

charlieflowers 13y ago

In the US (and I presume most 1st world countries), we're pretty thoroughly (and intentionally) infected with Consumerism. People who are making $150,000 are not content, and are working 60-hour weeks to get that raise up to $160,000. And the same thing is happening with people making $500,000 or $50,000. All of those salaries produce MORE than enough to live comfortably on. And many people with a good salary could -- if they so chose -- live on $40,000 and save like crazy, and retire very early (as preached by Mr. Money Mustache among others). But ALMOST NO ONE DOES THAT. So what logical basis is there to assume that Basic Income would change this? Many people already have Basic Income plus a whole lot more, but they don't pursue a basic secure position. Rather, they spend all they make (and often more), and they work slavishly to get more income. (Is Basic Income meant to help the poor and unemployed ... who don't have the "good salary" I mention above? If so, I'm all for it, but it seems to me that if the price of a slum apartment is $300/month before Basic Income, it will merely be $600/month -- or whatever scale factor it takes to soak up that extra income -- after it.)

dllthomas 13y ago
That's much of the point. If people want to feel useful and most people want to be paid to feel useful, then only a few will opt out - hopefully in favor of something that means more to them - leaving space for those who can't and/or won't.