Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics Universal Basic Income? Guaranteed Job?

I'm excited to see where this goes.

Netherlands makes a very good laboratory. It should be interesting. They decriminalized drugs a while back and very few people became addicts, so they have a population that is interested in western-style financial success.

Let's see if artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs blossom.

Finland's Basic Income Experiment Starts - Really, It's Testing The Laffer Curve For Poor People

Has someone mentioned Norway? If not seems they have a good thing going: Economey of Norway

One of the problems we face is NOT a guaranteed job for everybody: What with automation and AI there simply will not be enough 40 hour per week jobs that serve any useful purpose. The Basic Income will be so we don't have to get everybody unemployed digging holes and filling them in.

Giving some money to these unemployed people is supported by the Laffer Curve idea. It simply extends the curve into negative regions. When you give money to poor people they go out and spend it all immediately and it bounces around the economy many times. Some of it gets paid in sales taxes, some in wages to people who do have jobs and thus it generates income tax. In fact, if it bounces around enough it ALL gets paid as one tax or another, so it comes back to the government.

This is a concept too few people understand. "A recent study of UI's economic impact, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1999, found that UI benefits produced $2.15 of increased economic activity (GDP) for every $1.00 in UI benefits paid to laid
off workers." 2002. UI benefits are also income taxable.

A related benefit is availability for volunteer work.

Taxable, but if all your income is the unemployment benefit you probably won't owe much. I'm probably collecting one of the highest UI benefits of anybody in the country and my award is under $11,000 total.

Universal basic income and guaranteed job, and welfare, and all the rest of these good works are efforts to deal with a permanent underclass. Dummy jobs are going to go away (and its happening right now). If you do not have a college degree, or a specific needed skill, you are not going to be working, unless gov has make work projects. I remember when Washington state decided that those on welfare, and able to work, would be put to work picking up trash on the highways - the state union for highway workers put a stop to that right away (claimed it took away their jobs (which they never did))

Anyway - we are at the beginning of a very real, recognizable, and permanent underclass. So far there have been no solutions that work, and no public recognition of the problem. Those that read SciFi will probably be familiar with the problems of a permanent underclass as that has been a regular meme for a very long time. Its pretty well accepted, for instance, that fast food companies have several test sites where EVERYTHING is automated but the counter person who delivers the goods. My own suspicion is that we will eventually end up with permanent CCC and WPA as well as training for those who want it.

Before any of the above happens, of course, we are going to have to work through the dealing with our incredibly greedy, incompetent, self serving elected class which, I fear, is going to take a LONG time, effort and pain.

Well said. I would add that we have a culture, based on capitalism, that needs to be changed. We won't get the right kind of politicians until that happens.