Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Basic income guarantee - opinions&criticism welcome
by
Hunterbunter
on 18/09/2012, 10:51:52 UTC
Fair enough, I don't think I do, as it seems you were anything but lazy in earning those 10 years off. What do you generally do with your time now? Is there anything you do that would otherwise be considered productive? You don't have to be, of course, I'm just curious what your plan was for 10 years (if there was one), and whether you were sticking to it.
I'm sorry I can't answer your questions.  It's just too personal.   What I can tell you is that I think I'd probably not be aware of bitcoin right now, had I been keeping on doing that job.  Sometimes I happy I did quit, just because of that.  

Ok, I'm sorry if my question intruded into your personal space. That was unintentional.

Quote
You earned that time off yourself, but would you have been getting this income while you were working, you'd still be getting it now and would been able to achieve the same thing you're doing now anyway with a slightly higher quality of life. If the economy was that awesome anyway, then the same should happen provided you're needed for something.

I'm not sure you get my point.  Right now I don't do much but at least I don't cost society anything.  Were your proposal to be implemented, I wonder how many people would immediately quit their job and start leaving on other people's work and money.

I understand what you meant, but the proposal is that if the basics are so cheap that it costs society very little, what's the big deal? Australia spends 2% of it's national budget on "I can't find a job but I need to eat" welfare...hardly back breaking for society to support this right now, and there's a pervading view here that all welfare recipients are permanent "dole bludgers" too, so at most, all the people who absolutely will not work under any circumstances costs 2% of tax revenue.

If the cost of giving everyone a basic life, factoring in all of the people who simply wouldn't work at all, managed to fit into that 2% of budget, purely because productivity was so incredible, wouldn't it be nice to have? Of course this probably isn't possible right now, but it's potentially foreseeable within 50 years. The other question to answer is what % is acceptable - how cheap must it be to feed/clothe/house/healthify a population compared to all other productivity for a society to implement it? 0.1%? 10%?

Sure a lot of people would quit jobs they hated, and people would only ever do "work" that they enjoy...but I see that as a positive end goal for our species. The ultimate fulfillment in the mastery of our environment, if you will. Working for food is so...cave man.