What do you really want to do with your life? Are you doing what you really want to do? Whatever the answers, he suggested basic income was the means to achieve those goals. The idea is as simple as it is radical: Rather than concern itself with managing myriad social welfare and unemployment insurance programs, the government would instead regularly cut a no-strings-attached check to each citizen. No conditions. No questions. Everyone, rich or poor, employed or out of work would get the same amount of money. This arrangement would provide a path toward a new way of living: If people no longer had to worry about making ends meet, they could pursue the lives they want to live. (the article in long. here is the link again if you want to read it)
The article provides some ideas on how to pay for some of it. I doubt it would work.
13 comments:
Definitely an outside-of-the-box idea...
What if one of the things you want to do with your life is to work, build a business, provide services for hire or manufacture things and sell them in order to make more money?
Those with a more utopian bent, such as the organizers of the Swiss referendum, want to open up more options, to let people create art and free the world of what Straub calls “bullshit jobs.”
The guy things that people will no longer have to do bullshit jobs. I assume that means being a waiter in a restaurant, clerking in a store, flipping burgers, cutting hair, mowing lawns, cleaning out the sewer lines, changing the oil in his car. I don't think HE is expecting to do those bullshit things himself. How crass!
If everyone is making art and stained glass windows.......how does he expect to get any of these things done if no one has to do the "bullshit" jobs.
Idiocracy.
A clean latrine is my idea of art, and we need a lot more of those kind of artists than we do some more stained glass.
This ideal society sounds like one simply awaiting it's enslavement by the meritocracy next door.
"What would happen if we just gave people money?"
Well obviously you have never tried that. I have plenty of times and, the answer is they spend it, and then ask for more, because they rarely spend it well, having gotten it without much effort. Do you use the air around you wisely or judiciously? Are you careful to make the best use of the sunlight you get, or do you waste them without a thought?
It would make income itself a tragedy of the commons, as it already does in socialist nations like ours.
I wish we could count the number of social worker type govt jobs added in the last 60 years. It has to be a ginormous number and all those jobs would be Kaput if this idea was enacted. Of course, they'd get their montholy dole like the rest of us.
I actually like the idea of a guaranteed income if it meant we eliminated all the existing govt programs. Think about this- libruls and beleagured minorities would have nothing to whine about anymore.
This "basic income" notion is the next great Progressive cause to undermine the middle class. Watch how it works.
They float it out there in some closed, limited experimental basis, as here; give a bunch of people free money. Then, very shortly thereafter (very shortly, before people start fucking up), start touting the benefits. NPR/PBS programs on how it has changed lives. There is no follow up on whether the change was for the better, and of course, no investigation of possible downsides. Women and children benefit. Racial minorities and gays love it. To the extent that the costs on society at large are discussed ... they are not discussed. Political candidates take up the cry. Basic income is a right! Common sense/conservative objections deemed racist and sexist and homophobic and corporatist, etc. Discussions about "basic income" as a human right. Editorials. Then someone discerns that right in the penumbra under their butt which is located s[h]itting on the US Constitution. Litigation ensues. Protests. Social media campaigns. Famous people weigh in in favor. USSC. ????? Win or lose it's in the progressive pantheon now and will always be there. They will wait patiently if necessary.
What would happen if we let people invest their own social security money?
The left had an answer for that one not too long ago; people could not be trusted in that capacity. That answer will be memory-holed.
The idea that this is even being floated as a legitimate policy only goes to show you the utter intractable nature of RMPC and how utterly devious, dangerous, and evil it is. Seek to take away the will of man by giving him what he wants through government sanction and watch before your eyes how a people and a nation totally become enslaved to it's base desires. This is the total antithesis of the founding of our country. A basic income will be its utter doom. When i've told you all that conservativism is dead, this is further proof of how really dead it is. This idea would never have seen the light of day in America 10 or 20 years ago, but now I see it more and more, along with all the other sundry gender/identity politics going on.
Trump can try to make America great again, but he will be totally bulldozed by this rancid bullshit of the RMPC ideology.
What does RMPC mean Methadras?
AJ Lynch said...
What does RMPC mean Methadras?
Radical Marxist Progressive Collectivist(ism)
So how is government going to deal with people who never really handled money before, which is one of the reasons why they are poor, who blow their basic income money all in one shot? We've seen what welfare recipients do on the 1st and 15th of any month. Poof, taxpayer money gone. Now do that to an entire country.
Paul Krugman is out there rubbing his tiny little hands together wondering how delicious it is going to be to see government finally tax people to such an extent as to see that very money get skimmed for its own purposes, then whatever is left over given to people as basic income only to see that money come back again in the form of taxes of one type of another. It's nationalistic welfare and the main beneficiaries will be corps and mostly government. This goes even beyond bread and circuses. So how is government going to deal with people who can't manage money, hmmm?
Raises the interesting question of how certain wealthy parents manage to raise trust fund kids who are NOT ruined by the certainty that they'll be taken care of for life. Trump seems to have succeeded in that regard. Anyone care to speculate what the formula is?
Ricpic,
Clearly it's the teaching of business acumen, how to make appropriate/good decisions, education, etc. A lot goes into it. Well, also the idea that their desires can't be outpaced by the trust fund. That helps a little.
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