21st
“wouldn’t you rather earn something than have it just handed to you?”
Yeah when it comes to actual awards and fancy goods, but when it comes to basic needs, basic human decency, and accomodations, those things should always be handed to people. No one should have to “earn” those things.Value people as people, not base it on how much they produce.
yeah but that creates a severe dependency that could be exploited easily, and creates a slippery slope @musical-clarity
Actually studies show that people who live in places with universal income (who are given money with no strings attached just for being citizens) do far better work than those who don’t and are more enthusiastic to do work.
This is because they still want nice things and will work for those but the part of their energy that was devoted to worrying about if they have enough money to pay the rent and bills this month is now freed up to do other things.
Some people will always be lazy and take advantage of the system, but they are always a tiny percentage and it seems ridiculous to me to punish the majority and severly hamstring their abilities just because a handful of people will simply live of basic income rather than work.
It’s been tested a couple times. In Canada, in some European countries, and the results are always the same.
There are two groups of people who show a statistically significant (Greater than one half of one percent, or 1 in 200) increase in Not Working and living off the guaranteed income. Parents of Children under school age, and full time students.
Among ALL other groups, employment actually INCREASED. Why? Because guaranteed minimum income means that homeless people can get at least a basic low end apartment. It’s hard if not impossible to get an above board job without a permanent fixed address. Also more people were able to have and maintain a BANK ACCOUNT. It is often hard to get a decent job without an account that can accept Direct Deposit for paychecks.
Also, lost work time due to illness and injury decreased across the board. It turns out if people are getting a decent amount of money each month they can A> afford to eat better, and B> obtain decent medical attention both preventative and emergency. Crazy right?
So why hasn’t it caught on?
Because it doesn’t directly benefit the people in power, and it increases THEIR PERSONAL taxes, their CORPORATE TAXES, and thus decreases their PERSONAL INCOME.
So, because Jeff Bezos and Alan Greenspan might fall from making 100 billion dollars a year to making 99.8 billion dollars a year, it’s a hard NO and we can all fucking die..
The End.The other reason the people in power hate it is because it fundamentally changes the relationship between employer and employee. In regular capitalism, the employer has all the power because if you quit you starve and if you get another job it’ll be equally shitty because all the bosses know that they have you by the gonads.
But with universal income, power is given to the workers. If your boss is an asshole, you can just quit without worrying about starving. So the employers are the ones that have to sell themselves and offer value for your time in order to keep enough staff to survive. And they HATE that.
(Source: cryptic-wix, via besteverperson)
