<p>i mean hsl, what does hsl think about it. whoops.</p>
<p>like where society provides everyone a living wage for free, because society is just that kind. </p>
<p>no really just because it’s possible, because our lovely machine things have allowed for obscene productivity.</p>
<p>so yeah. </p>
<p>[Basic</a> income guarantee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income]Basic”>Universal basic income - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I think that would be nice
Then nobody in the USA would be poor :D</p>
<p>what. no. it’s not like that. i just … like his opinions.</p>
<p>Wait…if everyone was provided with a living wage, who would do the work to produce products/revenue?</p>
<p>the surveys show around 80% of people would still want work if they received basic income. not very surprisingly it turns out most want more than basic income.</p>
<p>so what’s the difference then?</p>
<p>well it would alleviate a lot of the stress of having to find a job or staving or losing your possessions if you didn’t, and it would give the people who are working for basic incomes (i.e not making that much) the opportunity to get some education if they were wanting to, or to improve their situation in some other way - mostly it would just free up some time for them so they wouldn’t have to relentlessly work long hours for little pay just to get by.</p>
<p>one popular point that i’ve read in support of it is that the way things are now actually disincentivizes working - because the people who don’t work get the most government benefits. with basic income, everyone gets the same government benefits (basic income), so you don’t get extra free money for not working.</p>
<p>basic income has actually been implemented at different times in different countries with success.</p>
<p>the question a lot of people seem to have who read up on this proposal is - why * don’t* we have this already? because it seems like we would have it - and in fact it is what many writers about society predicted we would have when production became more efficient - because production has become way more efficient.</p>
<p>this leads to many different attempts at explaining why it hasn’t happened, why industrial efficiencies haven’t translated into more leisure time for my ppl.</p>
<p>Free money should be for those who are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Genuinely looking for employment, but can’t find it. </li>
<li>Have employment, but because of the number of dependents can’t live comfortably on their wages.</li>
<li>Cannot be employed due to illness or injury. </li>
</ol>
<p>Just giving anyone a hand-out means people will not want to work. And by the way, machines are the reason that so many people genuinely seek employment but cannot find it. When the jump is made from “making workers more efficient” to “replacing workers,” guess what, we have a problem. Just look at the statistics for cashiers.</p>
<p>We’re at a point in society where people are finding it increasingly difficult to work. What did we do the last time we had this problem so bad? By God, we put people to work. The WPA, the TVA. All of a sudden, people had jobs. And then, all of a sudden, those people were paying taxes on their wages. That’s more money for them AND the government. </p>
<p>But the prevailing wisdom of the current legislature is to give more money to corporations, hoping they’ll find it in their heart to actually employ more people despite the fact that they could ship the job overseas or install a machine to do the job with less workers, and keep more money for themselves.</p>
<p>Corporations are not people, my friend. The prevailing goal of a corporation is to make as much money as possible. People are secondary.</p>
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<p>yeah this is a good point i think.</p>
<p>not everyone can ‘upgrade’ and do more creative tasks. but the paradigm seems to be that you can - with the magic power of education. but this is simply not true. these creative tasks that are in demand require intelligence that only a certain percentage of humans have.</p>
<p>so thus we have the phenomenon of corporations smartly not employing incompetent college graduates. </p>
<p>the solution is obviously some reorganization of society, where people don’t have to work to live a modest life, but that kind of task seems beyond the capacity of the government to orchestrate. especially when there are powerful interests (wealthy ones) who oppose such changes.</p>
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<p>Disregarding all of the other problems providing everyone with a basic income would have, a 20% unemployment rate is catastrophically high.</p>
<p>I would literally not try at all in school and never get a job and just do other stuff. A society can’t be run like that.</p>
<p>Yeah people would probably work for fun if they receive basic income, they wouldn’t work as hard.</p>
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</p>
<p>What people * say * and what people * do * are very different things.</p>
<p>yeah. i think those surveys do something to assuage the fear that no one will work if they get a basic income though. plus, on the small scales where it’s been implemented the assessments have been positive, which means employment probably did not fall drastically.</p>
<p>But there had to have been an outside source of income for those small scale implementations. Where does all this money come from for a wide scale implementation? Either; a. the money comes from corporations making increased profits off these machines, or b. the government has taken over all business and distributes those profits to those being provided with a “living wage.” Either way, your scenario just became even more unlikely.</p>
<p>There’s also the psychological/developmental aspect that work is good for you. And the sociological aspect that “you can succeed with hard work” is a positive societal value.</p>
<p>Basic income allows for self motivation!The idea of basic income is to provide a base line. Not all the money in the economy is solidified and given out; people still have the opportunity to increase how much money they receive by working hard. This allows the economy to continue growing.</p>
<p>The lazy people can continue to live, but the hard workers can still come out on top. And there’s no starvation.</p>
<p>^ that’s the spirit!</p>
<p>anyway, roughly what seems to have happened is that all the productivity from the obscene automation in the last century did not go to the people and towards sensible things like basic income and reduced work hours like optimistic theorists had predicted. </p>
<p>instead, one of the largest frauds perpetrated on the people was hatched to funnel the value of all that productivity to a small minority - consumerism. the workers who had been replaced by machines found themselves in new customer service departments across the country, working no less and making no more than they had before, selling shiny junk to their fellow citizens.</p>
<p>While the profits of the now automated industries soared, paradoxically they did not take a burden of off the tired humans. rather the humans they were forced out of the automated industries and into new industries to work for living wages. these industries were based off of the long-noted appeal to humans of trading money for status. they would get us run around in circles chasing status symbols like hungry dogs, and pocket our money. it was perfect!</p>
<p>sick and wrong and immoral, but brilliant. it worked. we settled for near stagnant wages and work hours in exchange for being able to buy all these new, pretty things, which were manufactured cheaply using the technology of the automated industries, and sold for insane profits. not everyone fell for it of course, but enough of us did.</p>
<p>obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that and there are many more dimensions, but that’s my short story of what happened to us.</p>