Quote from: ShakyhandsBTCer on June 19, 2014, 07:35:51 AM

Quote from: Apraksin on June 15, 2014, 03:07:38 PM

Quote from: ShakyhandsBTCer on June 15, 2014, 12:30:36 AM

This sounds a lot like socialism.

If everyone had a guaranteed income then why would anyone work?

They would work since said income would be enough to survive living cheap, but not enough to live in relative luxury.

A much better question is: Why cant people ever do their research on basic income before asking the same stupid questions as the 100.000 previous askers and calling socialism?

Are you aware that Richard Nixon in his days wanted to implement basic income? He certainly was no socialist.

The fact is that all research on basic income shows wery positive results. Reduction in mental and physical illness, better nutrition, less educational dropouts and economic growth due to a boom in small local businesses. BI is showing it self to be an extremely usefull tool for reducing powerty.

http://www.globalincome.org/English/BI-worldwide.html

Guaranteeing income is the best way to keep people from working.

Take disability insurance for example. The vast majority of people who go on disability (via social security) will never return to the workforce. In order to qualify for disability you must have some issue that "prevents" you from working for at least 1 year. Once you qualify for disability you continue to receive it assuming you do not earn (via a job) income over a certain amount for live (until retirement age at which point you receive social security "retirement" income). Most disabilities that people use to get on disability are not really preventing a person from working, but rather the fact that the person does not want to work.

Extended unemployment insurance is another good example.

When a person has a guaranteed income while looking for a job (unemployment) then they will have less of an incentive to be serious about looking for work until this guaranteed income is about to stop. There is a very high percentage of people who would "look" for work for a year or two years while on unemloyment, then once their benefits expire would find a job within weeks (or find a job very close to the end of the benefit)

When people work less productivity still goes up. Technology increases productivity.

So why do we need people to work? Automation is going to replace most of the jobs that people do and then what? Then people will be out of work and machines will do it. This is a similar situation to when we got rid of the draft and made enlistment voluntary.

So why hold onto a legacy attitude designed for the previous century? Adapt to the changing times bro.

Quote from: zimmah on June 19, 2014, 08:34:23 AM

One of the problems of guaranteed minimum income is that many people who are perfectly capable of working will refuse to do so because they do not feel the need to.

The economy does not need them working. If it did then it would pay them significantly more than they'd get from Basic Income or anything else.

Let's face the modern reality, the service and retail jobs will not be done by humans for much longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDJc1NoGg2g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Teo6veZOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTPbdT87a4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt0KOp5UiAI

Why would you need a human bartender or restaurant waiter in an era where the restaurants are being automated along with the bartender. The human worker culture of life is being phased out and human workers just aren't as important as they once were with the machines coming online.

This is why unions don't have much power anymore.