201–210 of 337 posts
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> because there is nowhere else to get it. Why that? Nobody's talking about abolishing taxes. Note also that the basic income would replace many other forms of social subsidies that already exist and have harmful side effects.
Why that? Because you can't tax enough to fund a basic income for every single person.
Basic income has potential but I think people are waiting for the governments to provide, while there is possibly another way. Imagine creating bitcoin version that does not favor early adopters, but allows everyone participating to get the same amount of coins every week. Of course it's easier said than done, and it would need to be detailed a little more, but I think it's possible.
Step 2: convince landlord to accept this new currency instead of USD (or whatever local currency). ;)
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> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…
I often hear this argument, but it sounds wrong to me. Benefits are cut when you start working, and resumed when you stop again. Did you consider the fact that salaries WILL be lowered to compensate for BI ? If BI is 1000, that 1200 paying job will become a 200 paying job... I just can't see where's the incentive to work. Who wants a 200 paying job when you get paid 1000 for just breathing ?
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We're already giving money to people with no job, this would effectively take money off people who administer welfare systems and give it to low paid workers who would then get benefits and wages.
Not at all. It gives money to everyone regardless of income. Welfare makes up a small percentage of GDP (unless you include all entitlement programs which this wouldn't). A basic income would be a huge percentage of GDP. IIRC in Switzerland's case this is about 25% of GDP. That's a massive increase in government spending.
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120 million people at, say, -$1000 in net worth == big negative number. Anyone with $1 of net worth is wealthier than them.
It is ridiculous to suggest that someone with a dollar but no access to credit is weathier than someone who is able to borrow the cost of a house.
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http://www.overpopulation.org/immigration.html Your first sentence is a logical error, since overpopulation is measured worldwide.
You said that both things ('importing new people and replacement breeding') contribute to overpopulation. Importing new people can only contribute to overpopulation if you consider it locally. If you consider it globally moving X people from A to B cannot possibly directly affect the total amount of people in A and B. I considered overpopulation only in Europe and not globally because neither did you.
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> If you would like more than this, you can go and get a job and hopefully earn more (have a better lifestyle) than staying at home not working. Except this isn't the case, since benefits are usually cut when you starting working. This means that you start work in an insecure job with no necessary increase in quality of life. With a guaranteed income, if you were to get a job, you'd have a guaranteed increase in your…
I often hear this argument, but it sounds wrong to me. Benefits are cut when you start working, and resumed when you stop again. Did you consider the fact that salaries WILL be lowered to compensate for BI ? If BI is 1000, that 1200 paying job will become a 200 paying job... I just can't see where's the incentive to work. Who wants a 200 paying job when you get paid 1000 for just breathing ?
Rather than these posts discussing universal basic income in abstract, I would like to see someone go through a back of the envelope scenario for a real country that might try it. Switzerland or some other European country. Presumably there would need to be major changes to income tax brackets (especially for the lower income tiers) & dismantling of various existing welfare programs in order to fund a basic income. I…
Very good point. After all, we all know how sometimes wonderful ideas can turn out badly [1]. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
It's not a silly idea at all but I like to think of myself as progressive and I think it is a very bad idea in reality vs on paper. Just look at how college costs magically rise to the availability of loans and grants. What do you think is going to happen to food and rent prices once those supply chains figure out there is much more profit to be made? The Walton family alone has more wealth then the lower 42% rest of…
It's already worse than that. There are many products which have a smaller size of that's more expensive than the larger size because the smaller one is WIC-approved. There's targeted price-gouging for people who are forced by the government to buy specific products. There are also ridiculous loopholes. People buy soda and milk with returnable bottles, walk outside, pour it out, return the bottles for cash, and buy a…