Make economic inheritance tax 100% with allowances for personal, sentimental items etc. Distribute the resources amongst public works projects and personal resource funds for each citizen.
It Is Time For Basic Income
91–100 of 761 posts
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does this all interact with debt? Can I get a lump sum payment in return for my future wage? Can it be taken away to pay creditors, child support, back taxes, etc. ?
> Child support Presumably, Child Support would no longer exist for anyone. Children are people, with no income, they would essentially get a child-version of basic income, paid to their parents, to raise them, regardless of all other circumstances. (Similar to US taxes today, where the government effectively pays you some a small amount of money simply for having a child) If a couple conceives a child, and one paren…
That seems like it would create a perverse incentive to breed unnecessarily.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#93Get a job.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#94Basic income already exist for some people, it's extended unemployment checks + food-stamps.
If a person were getting 10x the amount a person gets on unemployment + food stamps, you might be able to call that basic income. Please show us all how a person living in a US city could survive on food stamps, ethana.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#95Thomas Paine makes a good point for citizen's dividend in his pamphlet "Agrarian Justice". http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html
Now that we live in a civilized state and people own all the property, it makes it impossible for one to live in a natural state. So, he argues property owners owe a tax to everyone reaching maturity. That way everyone has a chance to acquire property, education, or what not to live successfully in a civilized state.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#96The idea that you absolutely must work hard in exchange for the necessities of your life, is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, like a fundamental law of conservation, that it seems a lot of people cannot conceive otherwise.
This might be true in the US, where both political parties are right-wing and flaunt "socialist" as a curse-word every day.
I think BI is something that cant and shouldnt happen country-wide one day to the other. Cities should start doing it first. Cities like.. SF? which have a ridicolous surplus of money the city squanders, while still having a lower class without medical care.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be tied to some indexes that reflect the cost of living. If it's impossible to actually live a very minimal life on the basic income, there's not much point, as you'll still have to work and be under stress about making ends meet.
So basic income is the minimum living cost? What if minimum cost of living increase every year as it does? What if you live in San Francisco where the standard of living is crazy high? Do the citizens of S.F get a higher basic income than say Milwaukee?
This is an issue with the concept of basic income. Likely the most equitable solution would be for government to step in and provide housing directly or limit rents in some areas.
The federal basic income level would likely be based off of a national averages for cost of living, with state/city governments stepping in to provide greater subsidies if they feel it's needed. People may still need to pay more for convenience, but should have other options available, even if it means moving an hour or two away from the trendy metro areas.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#98So let's assume this was implemented. Some citizens, with their guaranteed basic income, will spend it wisely to cover their needs...as envisioned by proponents of this approach. Others, however, will waste their income and again find themselves short of what is necessary to cover their needs. What then? Simply increase the amount of basic income awarded, and hope that by throwing more money at the symptoms of povert…
When talking about public policy, it's important to get away from words like "some" and talk about actual statistics, because this will impact real people, not just a philosophical position.
If some is 10% of the population, and poverty is resolved for 90% of the population, the system would be much much better than the current system for eliminating poverty.
In Canada, we have actual statistics for both Old Age Security and the Mincome experiment.
Statistics on OAS (includes stats on the US). http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/elderly-po...
And quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
"Dr. Evelyn Forget conducted an analysis of the program in 2009 which was published in 2011. She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidences of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals."
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#99There are three major advantages of unconditional basic income.
1) It will always be beneficial to work. I.e. even for a couple of hours.
2) Society wont have to waste money controlling whether someone should have the money or not. The frees millions of people and billions of not trillions of control.
3) It removes most argument around inequality and it makes sure there always is customers.
Re: It Is Time For Basic Income
#100So let's assume this was implemented. Some citizens, with their guaranteed basic income, will spend it wisely to cover their needs...as envisioned by proponents of this approach. Others, however, will waste their income and again find themselves short of what is necessary to cover their needs. What then? Simply increase the amount of basic income awarded, and hope that by throwing more money at the symptoms of povert…
I think in that case you would be justified in telling the irresponsible person tough luck and maybe they would spend it more wisely the next time around. If they die of starvation that's their problem. I have a hard time believing that would be a wide spread problem though.