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The Campaign To Get Every American Free Money, Every Year
merbs writes: Supporters of a basic income have finally organized a proper political movement. Basic Income Action is, according to co-founder Dan O'Sullivan, "the first national organization educating and organizing the public to support a basic income. "He tells me that "Our goal is to educate and organize people to take action to win a basic income here in the U.S." This 2013 Economist article does a good job of summarizing the pro and con viewpoints on the (ahem) basic idea.
The idea behind a basic guaranteed income is that it replaces all that, and is universal. EVERYBODY, regardless of age, disability, location, job, or dead relatives is guaranteed the basic income. It replaces government pensions, welfare, food stamps, even the minimum wage, and all of the redundant bureaucratic apparatus (and chances to cheat) that are associated with those programs.
Even cheap Chinese laborers are being replaced by machines now, a new era is quickly approaching. I once agreed with your opinion, but in an era where most college graduates have to move back in with their parents - laziness is not the problem.
What do you propose? The death penalty for neck tattoos?
No matter how you cut it we will ALWAYS pay for those who won't work. Either we will pay as crime victims, or as supporters of their children who are in foster care/receive nutrition programs, need section 8 housing, etc etc. Or we will pay to dispose of their dead body when they die of neglect. Somehow those who will not work will cost you money no matter how you vote.
I, for one, would love to prevent desperation, crime, and abuse by paying losers to sit at home playing xbox and smoking weed staying out of my way and off of the streets..
desperate people do desperate things.
GPD of USA last years was 18.14 Trillion
300 Million times $10,000 is 3 trillion. So we need to capture 16% of the GDP in taxation to pay for this.
$869 Million of social security payments would be replaced by this. As would $949 Million of welfare payments. So the majority of this would be covered by the costs of the programs it would replace, and there are many smaller programs this would replace that I am not going to take the time to chase down and add up.
Has social security caused rampant inflation? How about child tax credits? Have welfare payments caused our currently explosive 1% inflation?
The simple math does not sound too bad.
Right now new capital enters the system via debt. Businesses and consumers borrow money the banks don't actually have. If it doesn't get to the consumers, it doesn't keep circulating. If it doesn't keep circulating, more businesses lay people off and there are fewer consumers spending less money.
The basic income idea is to put new money into circulation not from taxes necessarily, but probably from printing it into circulation. That creates some inflation, which is basically debt spread evenly across the entire economy. Then the economy keeps the money flowing, because there's a steady supply of it to people who aren't currently employed. It makes banks a secondary source of entry for currency rather than the primary one.
The government doesn't have to keep track of this program for rent, that program for health insurance, this other program for some other type of assistance, and then a complex tax code. The basic income subsidy and a simplified tax code makes the government much more streamlined so the tax rate can actually be lower or more of the money put into the subsidy.
It might not be an ideal solution, but it's not expected to be "free". It's actually a very profound macroeconomic idea for adjusting to booming per-worker productivity and a simultaneous lack of jobs. The problem it's trying to solve is that the reason the job market is so soft is that so few people need to work to produce the things that make everyone able to live comfortably. Demand for labor is down, which is causing demand for products to be down (via lack of means to pay). If more people could pay, more products could be sold. The corporations wouldn't need tax breaks as subsidies because nearly all products are subsidized on the buyer's side. Most of the tax burden could eventually be shifted onto the people owning the automation.