Basic Income For All

[Anna]

No "Quote", just only links
You have to read it.

http://www.basicincome.org/bien/

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/364450.shtml

http://www.citizensincome.org/

(Only this page from the website is in english)
http://www.freiheitstattvollbeschaeftig ... hp?lang=en

And?
What your thoughts about a basic income for all?

[Coda]

I'm going to have to express significant dubiousness about it.

By all means, I support the idea of making sure that everyone legally entitled to live and work where they reside should be able to have the necessities of life -- food, water, shelter -- and of course all of the other rights that come with such entitlement. I don't think that the correct solution is to hand out money to everyone.

The most obvious impact such a plan would have is to cause inflation across the board. By introducing more money into the system, the value of the currency diminishes, so prices go up to compensate, which means that the plan would need to increase payouts in order to keep poor people out of poverty, which just puts the whole thing in a downward spiral.

Even discounting the inflationary aspect of it, though, it sounds like a hasty, poorly-thought-out solution to the inefficiencies and troubles with the current welfare and unemployment system, and it works at cross causes to many (if not most) income tax reform proposals. If we're going to avoid EXCESSIVE inflation, the money has to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is, quite simply, taxes.

I'm going to avoid going into too significant of an economics lecture here, but... while I applaud the INTENT, I don't see the plan as described as being a good idea.

[strange_person]

The money doesn't come from nowhere. Government just takes the tax revenue which would otherwise go toward determining who's eligible for which benefits and how much, and instead hands it out equally to all citizens.

[Idiot Glee]

I'm going to find the source, but I remember reading once that in the US every person could get a payment of $30,000 a year from the amount of money used to fund social programs here.

[Coda]

Yes, at the cost of leaving those very people with nothing BUT that $30k because there's no government-run health care or other such programs for low-income individuals to work with.

[strange_person]

The healthcare system in this country is absurdly bloated and inefficient. It's possible that cutting out the perverse incentives from subsidies would fix a lot of that.

For that matter, we could raise taxes and give out more than $30,000, or the people who don't need it could voluntarily give up their share of the benefits so that others can have more.

[Anna]

The Unconditional Basic Income
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i7UaqdFKpQ

8 reasons for basic income
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9tNhUDh5g

The Unconditional Basic Income Economy - part 1 of 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzz654G-6g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tGL1n3x ... h_response

Basic Income - Summary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2YaPcy ... re=related

[Wic]

This pops up every once in a while in Finnish government. Everytime someone calls out a socialism card on it.

It's not going to work.

To tell a little story, a friend of mine lives on welfare and the goverment raised it by 15€. Right that instant his landlord raised the rent by 15€.