Universal Basic Income...

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This is the problem that brought down the USSR and cause China to abandon communism.

People are lazy resentful dickheads. Somebody's always gonna loaf and others are always gonna be resentful of it. This is why most people in the US hate the idea of welfare. They think people on the dole are just lazy and not truly in need. Hell, even if they were'nt supporting welfare with their taxes, they'd still resent working while others don't have to.

I would support a basic income (negative tax up to poverty level) if in turn, minimum wage laws were completely abolished. It'd also be great if the personal and corporate income tax were done away with and replaced by a consumption tax.

why don't more people oppose corporate welfare? that would seem to dwarf whatever crumbs trickle down to the poor. but I suppose the poor are a more convenient scapegoat. one can point at them from the windows of one's luxury car as one zooms past their squalid neighborhoods and look down one's nose and sneer, because they are point-out-able- but the faceless nationless multinationals are omnipresent and cannot be pinned down, can't be pointed at and blamed because they are like the sky above us. the poor are visible and weak and make nice soft targets, but destroying a multinational, OTOH requires a revolution in many countries at once. americans are too distractible for any such movement to even start. an illustrative joke here- a public union employee, a tea party activist, and the CEO of a multinational corporation sit down at a table that has a plate with a dozen cookies on it - the CEO immediately takes 11 of the cookies, then he turns to the tea partier and says, ?watch out for that union guy- he wants a piece of your cookie.?

You do realize, there are lots of working people on welfare right? As for disability, the reason the people aren't working is because they cannot, and thus need the help...of course then you have people asinine enough to think they ought to dictate what disabled people spend their government check on.

Hmm that actually seems like a good idea, if we had a basic income....no minimum wage laws, get rid of drug testing and then people could still go out and work to make more money. It would also allow people more time off from work, people could work save up some money and take a break from working and work on hobbies and experience life without the stress of not being able to make ends meet. Under the current system am on SSI hopefully I can work eventually...but if they implemented that I feel I could be working some of the time right now. Without minimum wage perhaps there wouldn't be so many expectations on potential employees to fit some perfect image.

Also abolishing pre-employment drug testing not only would make getting jobs easier for many, but it would save companies a lot of money as I am sure it is expensive to have employees drug tested.

That is the best joke I have heard all day, its funny because its true.

and so far the righties have no response to it other than "BAH HUMBUG."

Suppose I'm working at a full-time job, in order to provide for myself and my family. According to exactly what logic am I responsible for providing some random stranger a "comfortable lifestyle"?

taxes pay for a better life for all. no taxes = no public services = destitute out in the streets where you can't avoid those bereft of income begging for survival. that is a hobbsian existence which taxes [paying for public services] help to prevent. the choice we are presented, is a fork in the road that leads either to such a banana republic or to a civilized society like what the rest of the western world enjoys. too many people refuse to see the plain truth that there will always be those lacking the wherewithal to earn a survival income and will always be at the mercy of those of us with the wherewithal to earn above a survival income. the moral choice is to support a compassionate regime, or not. we all will live with the consequences one way or another. you can sneer and yell at a homeless person to "jerk himself up by his own bootstraps" all you want but it won't amount to diddly. such is just magical thinking.

Don't change the subject. We're not talking about "public services" in general but about straight-up forced redistribution from the productive to the nonproductive, regardless of whether they can't work, haven't tried to work, or just don't feel like working.

Let's put it in personal terms. I used to do handyman work for money, and may again. Suppose I use my tools and know-how to fix my neighbor's washing machine. He pays me $50, which he's happy to do, since a pro would charge $200 or more. Exactly how much of that do you figure you're entitled to, and on what logical grounds?

you are the one changing the subject, I am not talking about picking your pocket, but AM talking about general funds and the taxes necessary to maintain such. and ONCE AGAIN, not all of us can be "productive" and productivity is not the be-all and end-all of basic human worthiness. but you will not get this so I am wasting my breath here. there is just no dealing with ableists.

I think the point would be everyone has a comfortable lifestyle.....everyone works less, what if a society existed in which you can still live comfortably without working full time, in fact everyone could live comfortably without working full time? would you dislike that? But you already are helping provide random strangers with a comfortable lifestyle just look at the 1%.

But so long as we are talking about welfare and not infrastructure etc. there is no such thing as a "general fund" from which everybody benefits. Clearly some will be paying in and getting nothing in return, and others will be getting benefits while contributing nothing. If someone finds that he is among those paying in and getting nothing out, what is his incentive to continue doing so?



Nobody said anything about "worthiness," whatever that might be. (Can you define it?) I might think personally that Justin Bieber is a talentless hack, but the fact is that whether he has ten dollars or a quadrillion dollars does not affect me. Every penny of his wealth was given to him voluntarily by people who thought they were better off with a CD or a concert ticket or whatever.

There is no pie, wealth is not a static quantity to be divided up fairly or unfairly, it is created by anybody who offers a good or a service for which others are willing to pay. This is Econ 101. And whether it's one dollar fairly earned or a trillion, those who did not create it have no logical claim on it. Helplessness has no claim on ability. Life is not one huge hospital ward.



Don't have an answer, eh?



We already work something like half the hours most people worked a century ago. Material progress will continue to raise everybody's standard of living if we let it.

your whole attitude is that "productive" people are all that matter. for you, productivity = worthiness as a human being as opposed to those who cannot produce anything. you badmouthed such folks but you didn't badmouth "productive" people, so that tells me who you consider worthy as humans of survival. you don't want your tax dollars to go to help anybody you consider "unworthy" such as "unproductive" people - you consider the military and police and fire departments to be worthy but not anything related to social services. that is short-sighted because without social services no amount of military and police and fire departments can clean up the resultant mess.


so you would prefer the helpless would just disappear then. you don't want your tax dollars to help the helpless. fine. you only care about "productive people."


that IS my answer, you are exhibiting the behavior and opinions of an ableist. I have no use for such. all my life I have had to put up with people such as yourself browbeating me because I am not sufficiently "productive" even going so far as to call me "slacker" and other such nasty names. I would just rather avoid such people.

Alright than let's define who the productive are and who the unproductive really are. The whole problem is you're 'middle class' is just propping up the 1%, and uber wealthy...they get corporate welfare and numerous tax breaks, they sit on the majority of the wealth and try to keep it 'in the family' to keep it out of the hands of anyone outside their elite class.

But as was pointed out earlier the poor are an easier target to direct the anger and resentment that would make more sense being directed at the government officials bought out by wealthy and/or corporate lobbyists(as well as those lobbyists) who are really the ones screwing people over. But that would actually make sense...

Also going and fixing a friends washer machine for 50 dollars is not taxable income.

UBI is a band-aid proposed to patch up a gaping chest wound.

The structural inequality which necessitates the existence of lower classes can't be solved by distributing extra consumption-vouchers to the members of those classes - consumption is already a component of their structural role, so the structure itself isn't changed, only reconfigured. The gap may draw close for a time, but the system which enabled it to previously widen will live on.

It is not liberalization of the media of exchange, but liberation of the means of production from the non-productive gatekeeper classes (which exist in government and private industry alike), which will empower the economically oppressed to liberate themselves.