Basic Income?
What are your thoughts on Basic Income? Do you think it should be implemented. It's something I have thought about for many years & seems to be gaining more popularity worldwide. I do think it will need to be implemented at some stage in the not too distant future.
Can it be opt-in/opt-out or would you be forced to participate at the point of a government gun? Is it voluntary?
The way Basic Income seems to me is that everyone (billionaire or poor) receives a monthly check from the government to cover very basic living costs, rent,food etc. It would replace current welfare programs. It wouldn't be opt in. I imagine in order to opt out then you could just give your check away to charity :-)
I give a small recurring payment to givedirectly.org, who converts charitable donations into unconditional cash transfers to the needy. They are also in the process of launching a larger experiment, voluntarily funded, of giving basic income to everyone in certain regions (and comparing the well-being of the recipients to others, who will not receive the subsidy). I'm a big fan of voluntary, unconditional cash transfers to the needy, and I'm curious to see the experimental results from the basic income trial.
After that, it goes off the rails, though. Everyone, including givedirectly, seems to want to use tax dollars to fund future programs (and everyone seems to be assuming that the experiment will produce positive results). I say, if it's a good idea, they can fund it through kickstarter.
Even if it yields positive results when funded voluntarily, it's a stretch to think those results will continue after the government bureaucrats figure out how to skim from it.
I consider coalition's like government to be temporary measures in emergency like situations rather than permanent fixtures in a civilized society. If we are in a situation that calls for basic income as a solution it ought to be temporary.
If Basic Income were implemented, I would expect it to replace all welfare and abolish all labor laws and involuntary unions, most of which are there because people become desperate for work and accept jobs that are dangerous or require working long hours. In this way Basic Income would increase liquidity, fix the misallocated resources of the centralized planning that has ruined the economy.