Basic income as a human right

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But we don't like in a Dickensian society where our choices are chimney sweep, maid, thief or prostitute if we aren't born into a middle or upper class family. I've yet to meet a person who sold dope or p**** or robbed people because that was their only way to survive. I understand that not everybody can get a job, and even those who can work can't always find work or work that will pay the bills. However, we do have programs for that. Nobody freezes to death because there is no help at all. They freeze to death on the street because they either don't want to go to a shelter or one of the church programs or they can't get into one because they make you be sober when you are there. There is help out there for most people in desperate situations but it's not the help they want. A lot of people don't want psych help and don't want to stop drinking or getting high and that is what a lot of programs require. I don't have a problem with that. It's not fair in some respects but it also is fair in other respects. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to spend a lot of money cleaning up a drunk and feeding him and giving him a place to sleep when he's going to go out the next day and hustle up some money and instead of buying lunch with it he's going to buy booze. It's the same with psych problems, if someone isn't committed to getting help then they aren't going to stay on their meds so they can work and function, so why take that money that can be used to help someone else in a similar situation who is going to actually put forth an effort to be a contributing member of society and either try to work or if they can't for whatever reason at least they aren't going to blow what money they do get on something to make their situation worse again.

As for the justice system, I think many of the laws are unfair and need to be changed but I also know that convicts aren't the poor misguided victims that you seem to think they are. While one in a hundred might actually be that, most made a choice and had other options. They also didn't think they would get caught, and there are probably more people out there doing the same thing as they did who just didn't get caught than there are in prison. I'm not one of those "he deserves this horrible fate for committing the crime and breaking the rules" people. However, I do know that counseling and most of that "lets help him become the wonderful person we know he is on the inside that has just been squelched by our horrible society, the poor fellow" stuff that a lot of people want to push on prisoners doesn't do any good. People change when they want to and offering programs is one thing, and yes some will take advantage of them and change and do differently when they get out, but I wouldn't say that the majority would and I think it's very naive to think they would. Most know that they can go back out and go right back to what they were doing and just be a little smarter and not get caught this time. A lot of people do live on what they make with their crime jobs, and they choose to do that rather than make a living some other way. It sounds cold but it's not, it's simply the truth. That doesn't make them bad, that just makes them people who made that choice. That sounds weird too, but it's how I feel. I've been friends with lots of dealers, thieves, etc and they aren't bad people basically, they just chose to do that for a living. Most of them could and have done other things for a living but this pays better and is easier, so they do it. They also don't usually feel that it's their only choice and that they are victims of society. They usually know they made choices and see nothing wrong with those choices other than they got caught and it was illegal and wrong on one level but not on another level in their minds. Thats why I have no problem making them earn their keep while locked up. It's also hypocritical to want to teach them how to earn it when they get out but think it's wrong to have them earn it while inside.

Nobody has to starve or freeze to death in the US. Many don't like the things they would have to do to legally not starve or freeze though. Also, living in a crappy apartment or house in a bad neighborhood and eating cheap crappy food isn't the same as starving and freezing. There is nothing wrong with accepting that without money a persons standard of living is going to be much lower than someone with money. I'd love to have a better standard of living and to at least have a car so I could go to the doctor with my Obamacare when I need to or get to the grocery store more than once a week when I can get a ride, but I don't and I'll have to keep going like this until I can do something about it. I don't expect society or the government to give me a car or provide me with public transportation in a town that wouldn't be able to economically sustain a transit system. I know thats my problem and I'll handle it and I may not at all like how I have to handle it or live until I can fix the situation but thats life. It's not fair and not having a car isn't killing me or anyone else. If I had an emergency I could call 911.

You've missed my point. I'm aware that it's possible for the poor to get an education, but:

Some people start out with massive advantages and succeed with very little effort. Why should they keep vast wealth that they didn't do anything to earn, while others who work hard get nothing?

If someone has many opportunities and makes a lot of money, then some of that money should be taken to give opportunities to others.



That simply isn't true. Whether someone is sent to prison or given community service has more to do with their zip code, skin color, and access to lawyers than the severity of their crime. Most prisoners aren't murderers; they're in for drug possession or some similar non-violent crime. Should smoking marijuana, which is not addictive or harmful, mean that a (poor black) person be removed from society?



Because I don't want to see my home country become a place where regular people consistently make less and have less freedom than their parents did, while the rich collect more and more and make the rules everyone else must follow.



I don't understand this at all. Why should someone's taxes be determined by their knowledge of arcane accounting rules? Why should corporations with access to lobbyists be given advantages over smaller businesses that can't have loopholes added to the tax code?

Laws that are broken should be fixed, not set up as a bizarre tournament to see who can spend the most time and money on accounting and bureaucratic trickery.

Ah ok. I was under the impression that you were for taking from the middle class as well to even everything out. Of course we aren't middle class, but we look like middle class. There are people who want everybody to have the same no matter what, and I thought you were one of those. My bad. I misunderstood.

I have no problem with the super rich people paying their share or a certain percentage like the rest of us, however I don't think they should be barred from using tax shelters, etc that everybody else uses.

the problem is that "everybody else" lacks the same access to the same offshore tax shelters that corporations and bigwigs routinely use. couriers and secret swiss accounts are not an everyday thing for everyday joe and jane.

Everyday Joe and Jane have other options to invest their money for retirement. You wouldn't want to go to all that trouble to stash a hundred grand but you would to stash a few million.

I beg to differ- if I were an HONEST and MODEST wealthy person [a rare combo for sure] I would not hide my money from the tax man because I understand that my taxes help pay for a decent society and not a quasi-feudal winner-takes-all kind of deal.

Well, it's nice that you would be so willing to give up more of what you earned than you had to, but I don't think most people would do that. Also it doesn't completely hide them it just reduces your taxes and puts off paying them for a while. If I had money I wanted to hide and it was less than a few grand I'd hide the cash. More than likely I'd rent a safe deposit box and put it in a few sealed envelopes in there and tell them it was some papers. Money is paper, after all. Or I'd hide the cash here at home in a fireproof safe. If I was rich, of course I'd give to charity but I'd try and avoid as many taxes as I could. I think it's mainly because taxes are forced on you, charity is an option. I don't like anything that is forced on me, and I'm very stubborn about something of mine being forcibly taken from me.

However, if you had a lot of money but not so much to make you very rich, and you had kids, wouldn't you want to keep as much of that as possible so you could pass it on to them when you die rather than letting the government get it and give it to strangers? When you have kids you feel differently about that kind of thing. Your kids become the most important thing in the world to you then. I don't really have anything to pass on to my kids, but if I did I would tie it up as tight as possible so they could get almost every penny of it. My kids are much more important to me than some stranger, and I'd rather make sure my kids have a decent life than I would rather make sure some stranger didn't freeze or starve. Thats just the parent in me talking.

^^^
but too many people hiding their money from uncle sam results in the troubles we are having now.

There aren't that many who have enough to hide a whole lot from him. Also, it does get taxed in the end. They just pay less.

Also, the government isn't required to do all of these things for us. They aren't required to have entitlement programs and safety net programs, they aren't required to give grants for research or education or arts, they aren't required to do most of the stuff they do. I think that if they pared down a lot of the extras then they would have enough money for the safety net programs. Schools, military, infrastructure maintenance, fire and police, medical etc are all very important so they shouldn't be cut, but money for things that are purely for enjoyment could be cut and you would have your money for your income for everybody, or at least a start. Why aren't people who want this kind of thing clamoring for cuts in the budget for arts and for national parks and things like that? Most want to cut the military first because they associate it with war only but without the military you would have a whole different government in here really quick and you probably wouldn't like whatever foreign dictatorship took us over because we couldn't defend ourselves. We need the strong military. But which do we need more, the grants for arts and the money to keep up national parks or the safety net programs?

Clearly Larken Rose needs to be repeated here...

I am going to keep bringing him up & this particular video of his since obviously there are still government-fascists around here who haven't even bothered to pay attention to anything that Larken Rose has said... lack of a thorough-analysis to information regarding this thread-topic is a clear sign of laziness which is also dishonest-behaviour (then again I do not expect much honesty nor morals from people who buy into any « government is necessary/needed » doctrine... such people have always proven to be lacking in intellect [particularly that of street-smarts] & too lazy to bother with homework).

I'm not watching some YouTube video of some dude talking about his opinions. I wouldn't really consider that research and it's also not lazy to not do a ton of research simply to discuss your views on a thread about a hypothetical program on the internet. Nor is it dishonest.

This is clearly & concise evidence of being extreeeeeeeeeemely lazy as CLEAR and CONCISE EXAMPLES are provided within, therefore, they are not merely opinions, but actual-observations of neuro-typical mentalities.

What I think is a good idea is to base social policy on research rather than anecdotes. Sure, some people are self destructive as*holes. Those people are gonna be lost, no matter what.

The fact remains, PROVEN BY DECADES OF RESEARCH, that housing first is cheaper and MUCH more effective in dealing with homelessness.

This isn't about who deserves what. Stupidity and foolishness is its own punishment. This is about using limited resources in the most efficient and effective way to fix social problems.

That's all.

Damnit, too much time elapsed for editing post, but I'm gonna go harder-core now just for good measure...

This is clearly & concise evidence of being extreeeeeeeeeemely lazy as CLEAR and CONCISE EXAMPLES are provided within, therefore, they are not merely opinions, but actual-observations of neuro-typical mentalities (gee, only my opinion counts, and I don't care to hear anything different, because, gorsh ah-hyuk a-hyuk uh-hyuck, only my opinion counts and matters, even though ALL of my opinions have been thoroughly discredited with use of rationality and logic including REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES of how we can talk to people without government, how cars have been produced without government, and how we can buy food through the voluntary participation of grocery stores that are not provided by government !).

Not only is he certainly not just « some dude » talking opinion, but he gives CLEAR and CONCISE and specific REAL-WORLD examples of how there are a SHIT-TON of things that humanity currently does that did NOT « need » a 'government' for its successes, and he's also becoming relatively famous now amongst the « intellectual-circles » amongst the Internet-populations, and has made various presentations at public-speaking conferences !

Gee, gosh darnit, you television-watching Americans even get people from over-seas making these kinds of comments about your type...

The above was a comment made in response to examples of clueless-Americans (hyper-linked).

...amongst a whole host of additional « opinions » I could add to this list, but the FACT that it's actually the MAJORITY of what people outside the U.S. think about Americans, then I will take that as « evidence » that perhaps it's not really so much just any mere « opinion » after all. Typical Americans also don't even know the difference between science & philosophy, know less about their very own f*****g history than most non-Americans know about American-history, and seem to have the ideas of what constitutes opinion being mixed with being a fact, but that is largely due to the FACT (yes, FACT, because FACT is something that is factually FACTUAL), that they never bother to ever 'question' their own beliefs !

Typical peon in America follows a fundamentalist-style belief-system (i.e.: opinion-system) based upon the following ideology: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength

Willful-Ignorance, man, you basically resemble that remark when you say: « I am not going to bother to listen to anything that anybody else has to say because they are not government-authority (despite the fact that these kings & politicians & so-called authorities basically elected themselves as being everyone's authority [and yes this is FACTUAL but your typical American peon will just intentionally ignore history]) »

Considering that nobody in this thread has the power to implement any sort of program like this, and it's not actually being considered by the powers that be at the moment, this is simply conjecture and opinion. The entire thread is conjecture and opinion. I'm happy to read what the other people I'm posting with think about it, but I'm not wasting my time watching some YouTube video of some dude talking about it. It's not something that is important for me to research in any way, even half baked research of watching what looks like a good ole boy in the woods telling you what he's figured out.

And the last time someone on a thread kept obnoxiously insisting that I look at a link before I discussed a topic, it did not end well for the other person. Watching the Bubba in the video isn't really a big deal. If he's some kind of guru to you, then give us a short, condensed and paraphrased summation of what he's got to say. I have no desire to sit here and watch him for longer than about two minutes. His views don't interest me that much.

We are kicking around ideas and opinions in this thread, we aren't making policy. Nothing we say here actually matters in the grand scheme of things. It's just people talking. That's all it is.

My opinions are based on my experiences and people I've known and situations I've been in. That is pretty much how most people form their opinions. It's not really that big a deal because I seriously doubt the government would do this anyway. So, no. I'm not watching the video. People know you have posted it and if they want to watch it, they will. However, keeping on about it is a sure fire way to make sure people won't watch it at all because they have been annoyed over it.

Isn't the proposed universal income supposed to be given to everyone universally? So instead of choosing between getting a $400 per week for doing nothing or getting $400 per work for working in retail, it would be more like choosing between getting a $400 per week payment for doing nothing or getting a $400 per week payment + $400 per week for working in retail. At least that's how I think it's supposed to work.

Yes, taxes would be increased to pay for this. The middle class would be taxed more. They would also be getting the $400 per week universal payment. Their taxes would be increased by slightly more than the amount of the payment. They'd still be paying for it but some of the costs would be absorbed.

As has been pointed out, it may result in decreased expenditures in other areas. Less need for social programs to deal with poverty because there's less poverty, etc. I guess it makes sense that the most efficient way to use money to lessen poverty is to give the money to the impoverished people, rather than pay some social worker $40,000 per year to not give money to impoverished people.

Not only would it decrease the need for social programs but it would decrease cost resulting from bureaucracy. If everyone's getting the same payment it will be simple to calculate how much to give people with a minimum of staff. I work in the software testing division of the welfare office. I get paid $40,000 per year. If I went full time I'd get paid $55,000 (I'm on 3/4 time so I can study). My uncle works there in a more senior position and he gets paid $70,000 per year. This is in an 11 story, 300 foot wide building with hundreds of workers.

Why pay hundreds of workers to develop and test software? It's a cost saving measure. It's so they can eliminate the thousands of workers in other offices who deal with welfare recipients directly. People who complain about the cost of welfare only think of the money going directly to the recipients and forget about the millions of dollars it takes to pay the salaries of the many workers who run the system. We want them to self-services through their computer or phone. Even with thousands of workers, they aren't enough to deal with the customers. If you go into one of those offices you can expect to wait for two hours on average.

There are many types of payment. Some people go in to apply for payments. One of the most common reasons go in is to provide documentation that they've made their quota of job applications for the job seeker payment. This must be done every two weeks. Another reason is so claimants who work part time can provide documentary proof of their income to prove that they're not working full time (every two weeks). Another reason is so disabled recipients can submit their yearly medical review. Another reason is so recipients who got confused by this complex bureaucracy can clear up mistakes they made like forgetting to submit one of their many forms, etc.

Working in welfare has allowed me to see first hand how complex and costly this system is. Do I think the solution is to eliminate all welfare? I think the solution is to eliminate most of the bureaucracy and so save money (even though it would put me out of work). Just pay everyone $400 per week. That way you don't need thousands of staff to sift through millions of documents in an attempt to determine whether or not someone is eligible for some payment. It's true that would mean the payment also goes to non-poor people but for them it would be counted as taxable income. They'd be paying more tax but have more income and so not be much worse off.

A lot of people would still work. Not all ambition is caused by the need to have enough money to live on. If it was I wouldn't have given up a $500 per week disability payment because I wanted to have a career. If it was I wouldn't be sacrificing a quarter of my hours, and so quarter of my salary so I can study and one day get a better job when my current job already pays enough to live on.

Think to yourself if there are any other benefits to your job besides a paycheck. Do you enjoy seeing your colleagues every day? I do. Does it give your life more meaning? It does for me. I found unemployment to be quite depressing for reasons unrelated to money or lack there-off. I had enough money to live on and I still found it depressing. There are plenty of people who'd go to college and get a white collar job just because... just because it's tradition. just because their parents did. just because they're ambitious. just because the're passionate about wanting to work in a particular field, just because they want to live on more than the bare minimum, just because those who don't work still wouldn't be the most highly regarded members of society, etc. Maybe more people would have time to go to college if they didn't have to spend all their time supporting themselves. In this way universal income could increase the mean education level for society as a whole. Workers would have more power to demand better conditions if they weren't so dependant on their jobs. They could demand reasonable hours, no unpaid overtime, etc. I flinch every time I hear about someone working 12 or 16 hours per day because they fear losing their job.

And yet there would be some people, who are able to work yet dislike it so much they'd prefer to live on the bare minimum. Let them. Why? Think of the non-working populace in the real world, not this hypothetical scenario. People say they're not pulling their weight by earning money. Forget about money and ask, is stuff getting done in society. Does the power plant still run, doe the water works still run, is the supermarket still stocked, or have these places all shut down due to a shortage of willing workers? If we ask people to pull their weight, this should be measured in how much necessary work gets done, not in how much unnecessary work people get paid for.

Automation is reducing the number of workers neede to get things done. This will continue. I'm not talking about android workers like on The Jetsons, I'm talking about about automated checkouts in shops and takeaways. Soon we may have driverless cars instead of taxi drivers. Factories can be run with less and less workers...

So if a factory gets better machinery and so needs only half as many man-hours to run, what should be done? Should all the workers be put on a 4 hour day? They won't have enough wages. Should all the workers be put on a 4 hour day but still be paid the full amount? The company won't like that. Should the worker's union ban modern machinery? That would result in workers doing unnecessary work. What would mostly happen is half the workers would be laid off and the other half be kept on the same hours for the same pay but would twice the output per worker.

The half that get laid off would have to seek new work but if more places are able to eliminate a portion of their workforce while maintaining the same output, it will mean they'll be looking for non- existant jobs while some right whinger accuses them of "refusing to work" I hate it when right whingers shout down from the ivory towers and say that people who spend all their time looking for work are "refusing to work". If more people get laid off, if there are more applicants per job offer, that means it takes longer for them to find a job and yet the right whingers act like it's possible to find a job in five minutes. They say they're "not willing to work" as though being willing to work means a job will automatically be given to you in an instant. There are plenty of willing workers who don't work at any given time.

However, is stuff getting done? If partial automation means that the same amount of stuff gets done with half the workers, if all the labour needs are being met with half the population working, what is to be done with the other half? Put them into some meaningless make work? No. We invented labour saving devices so what good are they if they don't decrease the net amount of labour? If we can get everything done with fewer workers and that results in able-bodied people not working then fine, let them (also, it makes it easier for people who due to invisible disabilities are unable to work or can't work without distress if they no longer have to shoulder the burden of proof that they have an invisible disability). I won't accuse them of not pulling their weight if everything is already getting done without them. I find it ridiculous to say that everyone has to have a job when all the needs of society can be met with fewer workers. I find it insulting that people get stuck in makework jobs. I find it frightening that society expects a steady number of people to apply for a shrinking number of jobs and they all get jobs.

e.g. two million people to apply for one million jobs and then all two million of them get jobs or else they must be shamed and punished. I don't want to end capitalism but I don't want to rely solely on capitalism because the free market won't create a job for every worker. The free market will naturally seek to cut costs and so eliminate some of the jobs and then it will act surprised that there are unemployed people after they cut half the jobs and then they will get angry at the unemployed people and say it must be their fault.

We might as well have a system like this because if more and more workers get laid off due to automation then I'd rather deal with this then deal with the riots and possible revolution that would eventually result from an 80% unemployment rate. If we continue on this path, something's got to give so I'd rather have a revolution in policy than an actual revolution. I'd also rather not deal with all the companies going out of business if no one was able to afford their products. That would cause an even bigger recession.

We can't expect society to stay as-is forever. A history book will reveal that society has changed with each passing century and this century will be no exception.