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> I must be the only one who thinks basic income is insane. No, you have plenty of company. A basic income that isn't based on merit is a political hot potato

by lutusp 12y ago

> I must be the only one who thinks basic income is insane. No, you have plenty of company. A basic income that isn't based on merit is a political hot potato for reasons that should be obvious. > I personally don't trust my government (US) to implement this properly without any special niches carved out for someone. That's one problem, but a bigger problem is that, for those who have jobs they don't like, or who think working for a living is beneath them, this offers an incentive for narcissism. > At the end of the month if they don't have any money left how will they cover their necessary expenses? Oh, that's easy -- more basic income. :)

lelandbatey 12y ago
On the last point, if people don't buy the basics, then they literally have nothing to fall back on. This is the goal. Because everyone gets this basic amount of money, there would be no reason for someone to go without the basics except that they choose to. For once society at large would be able to actually say that a persons situation is completely of their own making.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  I'm not necessarily in favor of this idea (though I think it would be far less harmful than the system we have now...IMO, a person should never be made worse off economically by choosing to work, and that's exactly what our current system produces), but in any case, the "people will blow the whole check and have no money left at the end of the month" argument doesn't seem like a good one to me. Any such system is almost certainly going to be card-based, not check-based. There's no reason why 1/365th of the annual amount couldn't be deposited to the card every day, rather than dropping in a big slug of cash once a month. Transaction costs would be slightly higher, but not by much (the government should be able to negotiate really, really good rates for transactions, and they're already getting pretty cheap). Yeah, there are still going to be some people who go out and buy beer every morning. You can't fix everything. "Not perfect" isn't really an argument either, unless the person making it has a demonstrably perfect alternative.

by lutusp 12y ago

lelandbatey 12y ago

On the last point, if people don't buy the basics, then they literally have nothing to fall back on. This is the goal. Because everyone gets this basic amount of money, there would be no reason for someone to go without the basics except that they choose to. For once society at large would be able to actually say that a persons situation is completely of their own making.

Turing_Machine 12y ago
I'm not necessarily in favor of this idea (though I think it would be far less harmful than the system we have now...IMO, a person should never be made worse off economically by choosing to work, and that's exactly what our current system produces), but in any case, the "people will blow the whole check and have no money left at the end of the month" argument doesn't seem like a good one to me. Any such system is almost certainly going to be card-based, not check-based. There's no reason why 1/365th of the annual amount couldn't be deposited to the card every day, rather than dropping in a big slug of cash once a month. Transaction costs would be slightly higher, but not by much (the government should be able to negotiate really, really good rates for transactions, and they're already getting pretty cheap). Yeah, there are still going to be some people who go out and buy beer every morning. You can't fix everything. "Not perfect" isn't really an argument either, unless the person making it has a demonstrably perfect alternative.