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Universal Basic Income Programs Arrive (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator will give 100 randomly-selected families in Oakland between $1,000 and $2,000 each month as a test, continuing the payments for between six months and a year. And The Guardian reports that Finland and The Netherlands also are preparing pilot programs to test Universal Basic Income, while Switzerland will vote on a similar program this week. One Australian site is now also asking whether the program could work in Australia, noting that currently the country spends around $3 billion on their Centrelink welfare system, "so simplification can offer huge potential savings."
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
The Guardian sums up the case for a Universal Basic Income as a reaction to improving technology. "In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations...states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements... In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce."
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about the possibility of a government-run Universal Basic Income program.
That's the idea.
The UBI is a response to a feared future where there just aren't enough jobs to go around due to increasing automation. Fast food places are already introducing automated ordering systems so they don't need to hire cashiers, and just think how many drivers will be put out of work once self-driving vehicles are introduced on a large scale. If there aren't enough jobs, then some people by necessity will have to sit around doing fuck-all. The options are either to shame them with welfare payments and demands that they go apply for some jobs along with the thousand other candidates, or not pay them and see them forced into crime to keep food on the table, or try some sort of universal basic income scheme.
Except that only happens in a very small portion of cases. Basic income is just that. Basic. Just because I can "live" without working, doesn't mean I want such an incredibly shit-house "life".
Appeal to authority: I'm actually already in that position. I could quit my job tomorrow and be just fine from various investment income, but just fine doesn't get me to Vienna to visit my sister in July, or to the tip of Norway for a hiking trip like I'm doing in September. Fine doesn't let me go out to a wonderful Brazilian steakhouse for dinner. Fine won't upgrade my shitty video card which is struggling under the weight of Fallout 4, assuming that fine even pays for Fallout 4.
Yes there are bottomfeeding leeches in the world content with poverty and blowing all their welfare on booze while watching their shitty all TVs on a couch that smells of beer, sweat and vomit. But they are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Now a question for you: Would you quit your job and live your life with a $24000 /yr income?
They ran an experiment many years ago in Canada, called Mincome. Some of the results:
"Doctor and hospital visits declined, mental health appeared to improve, and more teenagers completed high school."
http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
Yes, a slight decrease in people in the workforce, but that were the young generation that attended school longer and mothers that stayed home longer to take better care of the children.
If those are be the results on a largest scale we've tried it so far then I don't see the problem (yet).
New things are always on the horizon
You're a slave to that toxic meme "Protestant Work Ethic".
People like to be social, and people like to be involved, and people like to accomplish things. That has nothing to do with "having a job". In many cases, "having a job" interferes with all of that. It's only this increasingly outdated idea that unless you suffer and work hard, you don't deserve anything, that perpetuates the system we have.
It also generally slows down *drastically* if you improve women's education, women's rights and general sex education.
That's a fairly retarded attempt at building a strawman.
First, the income tax rate on personal income in Switzerland is 40%. You're suggesting that it will suddenly be 96%. Nobody has proposed that and your paranoid ravings aren't based on anything factual.
Second, the guy making 2600/month also gets the 2500/month universal basic income. That's what universal means, after all... everyone gets it. He's now getting 5100/month, or 4060 after taxes. This is not a pay cut.
Third, not working is a 1560 pay cut, not 100. Some people will be willing to give up their jobs and assume a subsistence lifestyle, but most won't give up a third or more of their income.
Fourth, having people who don't work is actually the point of all this. As automation takes more and more jobs out of the market, there aren't enough to go around. Right now the only other options are mass executions, imprisonment or hoping that they starve to death quietly and don't riot or resort to crime as their new career (which leads back to improsonment).
If you have better ideas for how to deal with masses of unemployed people, feel free to suggest them.
Birth rate !== growth rate... just saying,
In the modern world, high birth rates equal high growth rates. Childhood mortality has drastically declined everywhere, even in very poor countries. Niger has a lower overall death rate than most rich countries, because of their very young population. If you look at a list of countries by population growth rate, all of those at the top are very poor except for a few small countries with very high rates of immigration.
The Swiss just rejected the idea big time.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.