641–650 of 761 posts
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They are welcome to leave. Yes, they should be punished because society needs a disincentive for gross personal hoarding.
Define hoarding.
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I don't understand - how does a Basic Job prevent you from either going to school or taking part time work? No one is obligated to work a Basic Job. It's just what you do if you are unable to find anything better. Basic Job programmes have vast bureaucratic overhead and are far more expensive to implement than Basic Incomes. Back of the envelope calculation, please. Incidentally, your study merely shows there is very…
> I don't understand - how does a Basic Job prevent you from either going to school or taking part time work? No one is obligated to work a Basic Job. It's just what you do if you are unable to find anything better. With this comment, it becomes difficult to see how you're arguing in good faith. If your Basic Job tells you to work at a particular time of day -- and classes and/or a part-time job are in the middle of…
I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…
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Well, Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. There's a fundamental conceptual problem with it: Imagine I, for whatever reason, accept a Basic Job from the government. The job is, by design, bad. I'd rather not do it. So my dream scenario is that I officially hold a Basic Job and draw its meager salary, but instead of doing whatever work it supposedly entails I sit at home and watch TV. This…
Basic Job is sort of by definition work that doesn't need doing. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. BJ is work that is not worth doing at current market prices . I.e., picking up garbage in the park might be worth $4/hour, but minimum wage is $7.25/hour. If we spend $7.25 more and get $4.00 worth of value out of it, we lost $3.25. If we are already spending $7.25 on welfare/BI and getting nothing in return, we a…
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How do you decide the "50M who actually 'need' it" with vastly less overhead? There is a cost to run the IRS and determine (correctly) peoples income. Furthermore, a 4k tax on 250M of the U.S. could be crippling to a good chunk of them. If your true point is redistribution of wealth, our tax system already does that and can do it more. But that's a different discussion..
You don't decide. The point of Basic Income is that it's unconditional and universal. If somebody can prove they're a citizen, they get the BI, no need to determine their income. As for a $4k tax being "crippling to a good chunk of them" -- no, you misunderstand the nature of BI. If we're paying $20k worth of BI in this scenario, then the mean income should be about $40k (since a good level for BI -- in basically any…
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Hard work is a recent invention. It arrived with the farming revolution a mere 10-12k years ago. Before that, humans as foragers are believed to have worked about 20hrs per week, if they so chose.
Yeah, and early vertebrate species in the Cambrian just swam around singing happy songs and smooching anemones all day while they enjoyed a universe free of those horrible constraints of energy and matter that nasty humans invented to oppress each other. Get a fucking grip. Hunter gatherers lived in shitty conditions with unbelievably poor material wealth, and had no protections against disease, injury, starvation, a…
http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanne...
Instead of a basic income, let's have a guaranteed minimum wage job, where people can pick up trash and do landscaping on public property. You can have your basic income, but you have to work for it.
There aren't enough jobs for EVERYONE to be employed though. The number of unskilled jobs is going to shrink as automation and efficiency increases. Also, not everyone is capable of working, like the disabled etc.
Also, most of the disabled are capable of doing something. A guy in a wheelchair can man the desk at a library, for instance.
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>Because you don't live in a vacuum. Our society makes it possible so that you can earn a living. This argument doesn't hold water for me. Society makes it possible for everyone to earn a living, so people who aren't doing it should start.
> Society makes it possible for everyone to earn a living Do you have evidence of the size and nature of job vacancies compared to the skills and number of the unemployed?
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Because you don't live in a vacuum. Our society makes it possible so that you can earn a living. You're just paying back for having that opportunity to those that are less fortunate.
>Because you don't live in a vacuum. Our society makes it possible so that you can earn a living. This argument doesn't hold water for me. Society makes it possible for everyone to earn a living, so people who aren't doing it should start.
Maybe if you don't call it a basic income and call it a guaranteed tax rebate instead we'd get everyone on board.