Basic Universal Income: Yes, the economy can survive without all people being gainfully employed.
Imagine all the things you COULD do if you didn’t have to worry about where your next paycheck was coming from. If we can restructure our economy, technology could very easily make this a reality within our lifetimes.
This means amazing things. Wage gaps and pay gaps, the exploitation of women, the disabled, and undocumented workers, and workplace discrimination, poverty, homelessness would all drastically be reduced if Basic Income became a reality. And with increasing automation on the rise, this economic system is more needed than ever.
This is stupid. If you’re not a functioning member in society you need to squire skills so that you can be
1) Ableist language.
2) Being able to produce profit =/= “functioning”
3) Why? Increasing automation is rending human labor less and less needed within the labor force. If you are happy and fulfilled pursing endeavors other than profit producing labor, why not do that if we had a system in place that allowed for it, such as a Basic Income system?
Where is the money going to come from? Whose going to pay you to do those things? And If your job gets replace by machinery then tough shit, learn a skill that’s needed or get out. What you’re saying sounds a lot like communism.
Did you look at the links in the original post at all? Basic Income is related to socialism, but maintains a market economy. Taxes still exist, the economy still functions.
And again, this isn’t just a “learn a skill that’s needed.” We’re talking about a world where, like in the FIRST LINK I GAVE, automation makes human labor increasingly UNNEEDED within the work force. Automation within transportation alone would lead to a more than 20% unemployment rate (and self-driving cars ALREADY EXIST)
Here’s the bottom line- in a world where automation exists in increasing abundance, humans should not NEED to sell their labor to survive. We should be able to structure our economy to make the sale of our labor optional. Universal Basic Income makes this a reality. It is perfectly viable.
Really. Basic Universal Income: Yes, the economy can survive without all people being gainfully employed. Look at the link. Read it. I promise.
I’m having troubles opening the link. Can you please explain where the money would be coming from?
A universal basic income is a form of social security system in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere. (Imagine if you will, if the government simply gave every citizen over the age of 18 $35,000 every year. If you have a job, you make more.
Congrats, no more poverty in your country. No more need to fund welfare. No more food stamps. No more unemployment. The government doesn’t need to pay for ANY of those systems any more OR pay the salaries of anyone who worked for those systems. Right there you’ve payed for a lot of the system simply by diverting preexisting costs.
Basic income systems have been promoted within the context of capitalist systems, which would be financed through a negative income tax or taxes on business.
The wikipedia article on Basic Income.
Thinking Utopian: How about a universal basic income?
The Economic Case for a Universal Basic Income (Part 1 of a series)
How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising
Have you considered: People deserve food, shelter, and medicine whether or not they can produce profitable labor
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