A Florida man will be the first in the US to get paid $1,250 per month for doing absolutely nothing

busunessinsider.com ^ | June 6, 2016 | Chris Weller

[PROCON]

For the next 12 months, a man from Sarasota, Florida will receive $1,250 a month for doing absolutely nothing, and the people footing the bill couldn't be happier about it.

The recipient, a man named Edwin who declined to speak to the press, won the $15,000 in a raffle held in San Francisco on May 31. The giveaway was organized by the nonprofit advocacy group My Basic Income, which wants to set up a slew of lotteries to see how basic income might work around the world.

[struggle]

Yeah! Waste one’s short years doing nothing!

[Political Junkie Too]

Better yet, call him a farmer and pay him to NOT grow a crop. That way, they can call him employed and boost the jobs numbers, too!

-PJ

[Hot Tabasco]

A Florida man will be the first in the US to get paid $1,250 per month for doing absolutely nothing

It's already in practice and it's called "Unemployment Insurance"...

And if he's smart, he'll do what all the other scammers do, find jobs that pay under the table........

[riri]

Personally, I think this is the way it's "gonna go down" as more and more robots and AI come on the scene. Jobs become more and more specialized, requiring certain levels of intelligence. And a lot fewer of them.

But, then, I also think, conveniently there are gonna be a lot fewer of us too.

[jjsheridan5]

While you may be correct, that the constitution does not have the authority to do this, the simple reality is that much, if not most, of what the federal government does similarly lacks constitutional justification. But the reality is that we are going to have welfare systems, and transfer systems (and all other kinds of indirect transfer systems, and all kinds of extra-constitutional regulations, laws, programs, and departments), regardless of what you or I want, and regardless of what the constitution says. To think otherwise is to ignore reality.

Additionally, I didn’t mention anything about the federal government. You assumed that I was referring to a national program. It may be preferable to implement it at the state level. But, either way, this idea is coming, irrespective of whether you, me, or the constitution, wants it. And, at heart, it isn’t a bad idea, but has the potential to be an absolute nightmare, if the implementation is left to the left.

Finally, I am not convinced that such a transfer payment system is extra-constitutional. If the money came from tariffs, I really don’t see a constitutional issue. In addition, in one way or another, the money supply has to increase each year (actually, I disagree with this, but most people believe it has to); I don’t see a constitutional problem with having direct payments to citizens, as the means to increase the money supply.

In short, what is the constitutional problem of transferring money directly to citizens, without means-testing or other forms of prejudice? The manner by which that money comes into the hands of the federal government is, of course, a potential source for extra-constitutionality. But not the transfer itself.

[Moonman62]

It’s another redistribution scheme to destroy class mobility, the middle class, and thus, most of the people who hold the government accountable.

[upchuck]

As a triage interviewer at a local food/clothing/etc. bank I speak with several people per month that are getting this much or more per month for doing nothing.

Food stamps, AFDC, TANF, free cell phone with minutes, help paying utilities, clothing, government rent assistance, prescription meds, free medical care, etc. Add it all up and the value is at least $1,250 or more.

[fwdude]

Tax it and watch him change his tune.

[kosciusko51]

Not to mention paying for O’care.

[Covenantor]

Guess they didn’t count the NYC union school teachers who sit in the rubber room collecting 4 or 5 times that. Last I heard the count was well north of 100.

[3D-JOY]

No taxes at that level...when do they start?

[jjsheridan5]

...but the current lack of work ethic in this country makes me doubtful of this ideas success.

You hit on a very important point. Things are changing very rapidly, and we are going to have to be very adaptive (we as a culture, and as a nation). One of the biggest adjustments that will have to be made is a rethink of the value of the "work ethic". The simple reality is there just won't be enough jobs to go around. Consider China. Only a few years ago, China was cheap labor. Now? They are rapidly converting factories to make use of automated processes. And this is in a nation that has very cheap labor! Where are the jobs going to come from, in order for people to get a "work ethic"? Digging, and refilling, ditches?

What will replace "work ethic", as a builder of character, and as a stabilizer of society? I have no idea the answer to that question, but it is something that is becoming relevant far sooner than most think. And conservatives had better not leave that heavy thinking to those incapable of doing so.

[Veracious Poet]

Isn't this how the feds do it?

Actually, they only print enough to sustain about 1% of the population...

[FredZarguna]

Finally, I am not convinced that such a transfer payment system is extra-constitutional.

Convince yourself:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I don't accept the idea of the "inevitability" of anti-Constitutional laws. No conservative worthy of the name should do so.

[jjsheridan5]

Personally, I think this is the way it's "gonna go down" as more and more robots and AI come on the scene. Jobs become more and more specialized, requiring certain levels of intelligence. And a lot fewer of them.

But, then, I also think, conveniently there are gonna be a lot fewer of us too.But, then, I also think, conveniently there are gonna be a lot fewer of us too.

What worries me the most about this issue is this: throughout history, the left has dominated by a) promising gullible people what they wanted to hear; b) extracting wealth, either directly or indirectly, from the productive sectors of the economy, such that the standard of living remains just above what is necessary to avoid revolt (this extracted wealth is not for the gullible people, but rather for the elite themselves); c) use a portion of this stolen wealth to pacify the gullible, and to prevent opposition (the rest they keep for themselves). The left will not change, and their pattern inevitably leads to quite evil things.

As we are on the cusp of an unprecedented drop in marginal costs of production, and an unprecedented drop in the demand for labor, how will this pattern manifest this time? The one thing we can say with certainty is that left, absent any opposition, will not allow the standards of living to rise significantly, at least for common people. And another thing we can say with certainty is that the elite of the left (and their token opposition), will find some way to steal from the people what should have been an unprecedented rise in the standard of living. Finally, we know that the left, especially when enriched and in power, will have no boundaries or compunctions.

This is why conservatives cannot simply allow the left to dominate the field of ideas, when it comes to these changes. They will take good ideas, and turn them into nightmares.

[stocksthatgoup]

So $15,000.oo + free medical + food stamps + section 8 subsidized housing +, food bank + other benefits - what total level of earned income - taxes.

[mjp]

you'd receive the same predetermined amount of money each month, all of it funded by taxes.

Redistribution associated with confiscatory taxation, government budget deficits, and inflation are destructive and disastrous, because they have a negative effect on all the following: savings, investment, productive expenditure, demand for labor, increases in employment, and increases in money wage rates, productivity of labor, real wage rates, capital accumulation, capital intensiveness, economic progress, and increases in prosperity. These lead to stagnation, decline, decay, and impoverishment, and finally to a hellhole.

[jjsheridan5]

By your argument, consider the following scenario. The federal government comes into some wealth (forget about how -- a meteor made of gold strikes federal land, they win a war, heck, they find some coins between the cushions of a sofa they didn't know they had). Now, the hypothetical is this: the federal government decides to give that money to the people, equally and without prejudice. According to what you just said, they would be constitutionally prohibited from doing so. (Remember, my point was that I don't see a constitutional problem from the payment, itself; your response was a quote implying that, because the payment is not a power delegated to the US, payments themselves are unconstitutional).

Is your contention that payment (not the securing of the money, but the payment itself) is unconstitutional? That if the US were given a bunch of money from aliens, or were to find a deposit of wealth on federal lands, or were to win some kind of intergallactic lottery, the government could not give that wealth to the people? I am sorry, I cannot see that that as a valid argument. If your argument is valid, then there is a process to create an amendment, because one is surely needed, given that there is no way that the founders of this country would have prohibited the act of dispersing money (the attaining of the money, yes, but not the dispersement).

This would mean that the only constitutional issue is the attainment of the money, in the first place. And, here, I would agree that most of the means by which the government gets wealth is unconstitutional. But there are powers at its disposal. One is printing money, and the other is tariffs.

I believe it was Milton Friedman who argued that the money supply should be increased at a constant rate, and the increase should be distributed evenly amongst citizens. This would allow for the elimination of all forms of welfare, would be constitutional, and would turn poor people from mindless recipients who have no role in the economy, into people who would start to become decision makers. Was he not conservative (I apologize if it was another conservative economist who proposed this -- although I seem to recall reading many such arguments from conservatives, so it doesn't really matter)? Was his idea not constitutional? Because he was a conservative, talking about an idea very similar to "universal income".

[Ghost of SVR4]

I’m sure the IRS will be all over him.

All over him? They'll classify him as below the poverty lines and give him an extra 5K for the EITC.

[Trumplican]

Have these people never heard of welfare? And $1250 isn’t going to go very far in a month in Sarasota.