Basic income often gets booed by highly motivated workers claiming that it will be used by free loaders and everyone will stop working and the world will end.
Pretty dramatic for giving people just enough money to pay for food, clothes and shelter. In the above linked article, they put a basic income at $525/month. I put it at $1200/month for adults and $600/month for minors.
When you provide Maslow’s base level of need for everyone, there’s less reason for them to do less-than-scrupulous activity. Why go into crime when you don’t need to do anything to have food, clothes and a place to live?
In case studies, poverty and crime fall while incomes as a whole rise.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Less crime and less poverty?
Everyone gets the basic income. That means workers will have the basic income in addition to their wages. So, you get a bonus – every single month!
Robots are going to take millions of jobs (waiters, drivers, miners, manufacturing, construction, etc) over the next decade. We need to be prepared for that and provide for people.
Basic income doesn’t kill capitalism either. In fact, it could boost markets. If you work and create a business – you will be profitable and keep your earnings.
People will have their basic needs covered to pursue a business idea freely. More competition. More new products and services.
And in my proposal, there’s no income tax. Labor shouldn’t be taxed. So you keep all the fruits of your labor.
Which means, working provides you substantially more money for a higher standard of living and wealth accumulation. That sounds pretty capitalistic to me.
We shouldn’t have people starving and homeless because they weren’t lucky enough to be born into a family with enough means to provide for them.
It’s our responsibility to be sensible and provide food and shelter for all people now that we have the means and the distribution mechanisms available.