441–450 of 1001 posts
So, a question for the BI fans: I've seen it said repeatedly that BI will save us money (or at least, not be so outrageously expensive) in part because we can eliminate existing welfare programs. "Just cut a single check, no more overhead from several agencies", they say. But riddle me this: what do you do when someone on BI has a financial emergency or, as will happen with some regularity, just flat-out blows all th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I'd hope the system would absolutely tell them "tough shit". There's got to be a line where the safety net gives out, because someone is too expensive to help. That's where family and charity hopefully take over. At the same time, I think your instinct is right, and it's something I've never heard mentioned before. It's almost inevitably that there'll then be the "food security" fund, and the "housing gua…
"Tough shit" sucks when parents blow their handout on lottery tickets and drugs, leaving their children in perpetual poverty.
I see no reason such parents should keep their children.
So is this basically "pure" communism? I guess historically, countries we called communistic didn't really adhere to its central idea; or they couldn't do so practically due to the accompanied political/economic instability following regime change.
No. Communism requires abolition of private ownership. However, the hyperinflationary spiral resulting from BI could assist a transition to communism.
What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…
> worked for black money and collect the social benefit at the same time This one doesn't apply to BI, since you get the same amount of BI money whether you work or not and regardless of how much you earn.
What amazes me in this discussion about BI is that most people don't seem to realize that systems similar to BI have already been tried in Europe, and that they didn't work. I come from the Netherlands, which has always had unemployment benefits. Nowadays you get those only if you meet a bunch of strict conditions but it hasn't always been so tough. In the early eighties, there were almost no checks whatsoever. The r…
> worked for black money and collect the social benefit at the same time This one doesn't apply to BI, since you get the same amount of BI money whether you work or not and regardless of how much you earn.
Doesn't this mean that BI will be even more expensive?
Good to see steps like this being made! As a slight aside, there are strong proponents who argue, based on Ricardo's law of rent [0], that any excess income above the basic subsistence level will inevitably be swallowed up by landlords in the form of rents. I'd be very interested to hear from the folks involved in this study if they have an opinion on such an assertion, and if you have any ideas on addressing that ef…
Not enough discussion to this effect. When everyone has more money, the prices of everything will probably go up.
I realize this isn't a substantive argument about the issue at hand, and will be rightfully downvoted..but I think this might be the first time I've _ever_ been so daunted by the ridiculousness of an idea, that I can't begin to formulate arguments against it, solely because I can't tell how to frame the argument.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Tough shit" sucks when parents blow their handout on lottery tickets and drugs, leaving their children in perpetual poverty.
Short of internment camps, how does any welfare/safety net program address this?