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comment by wasoxygen
wasoxygen  ·  3494 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Happy Basic Income Day

Basic income is often described as a welfare system superior to the programs now in effect. In the United States, that is not a very high standard.

What are the merits and downsides of a basic income policy on its own?

In earlier discussions it was not obvious that the math would work. The Dauphin experiment shows that people did not quit their jobs en masse, but they also knew that it was a temporary program and they would have to support themselves after the experiment ended.





user-inactivated  ·  3494 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'd quit my job and do full time activism

am_Unition  ·  3494 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If you've got a lot of time to kill, long discussion here.

wasoxygen  ·  3494 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks, I remember that post, but missed most of the discussion.

I am not convinced that so-called bullshit jobs are so bad; I have argued that workplace conditions have gotten a good bit better than they were in the days when actual bull shit was a feature of many laborers' workplace. And I think it requires some energetic handwaving to say that an office job is useless when, by definition, it involves labor that someone is willing to pay for.

I don't think I am unusual in that I began my career with few valuable skills and started by doing unpleasant and low-paid work that very gradually led to a comparatively comfortable cubicle. It will take some fine tuning to work out how you give a young person more money than they can earn without compromising their motivation to start getting experience.

In short, the "average" (median, or whatever) worker in a given place has a far better deal than at any time in the past, and this despite centuries of fear of automation bringing ruin to workers.

b_b  ·  3494 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for bringing that up. Now I'm pissed off about the payroll tax again.