I can see how this could be fun... for a while.
there is such a Universal Basic Income, in ..ah...certain neighborhoods already
Mike Brown the gentle giant lived in one of them
Libertarians have always been mad.
Now they think the way to go is to take it from you and give it to others more directly. Pure insanity.
“...a space-tourism executive...”
That’s what I wanna be when I grow up.
Universal basic income would demand an outgo from somewhere that will not be basic at all.
The Guaranteed Annual Income has been around since Nixon and Moynihan were pushing it in the early 70s.
The principle attraction is the efficiency of cutting out the bureaucratic overhead of the welfare agencies.
The obvious objection is the disincentive to work.
But there already is a universal basic income: $0.
And everybody gets it, every day.
Let’s go full idiot. Why not? Let’s get ours like the Rats and pubbies are. Working is for chumps.
They love spending OTHER PEOPLE’s money..... Where in heck do these idiots think the ‘basic substantial income is going to come from?” Morons each and every one
The “Tech Elite”, just like the NYC/Bos/DC Elites, have to tow the liberal line, if they want continued access to ALL OF THAT MONEY...
Don’t play along, say something impolitic, and you’ll be cut off from those fancy yacht gay-orgy-with-kids parties, and the venture capitalists that go to them.
If such an idea could work, there would be no laws against counterfeiting.
Capitalism is based on symbolic bartering. Instead of trading a chicken for two loaves of bread, I pay money for the bread, and sell the chicken for money. That way, you aren’t stuck with a chicken and you have money that you can trade for something else.
Thus, the money is a proxy for the goods and services that would change hands in bartering, and its value is extrinsic. Giving money to non-producers sets the value of that money at zero, since it represents nothing.
We don’t have these magic robots yet so where will houses come from? Where will food come from?
We already have a “basic income”. It is called WELFARE. If we didn’t have a “basic income” kids would be on the streets starving...but they are not.
Now there’s A REASON why we have food stamps, WIC, Section 8, and other non-cash programs...and that is because the parents will blow the money on drugs, booze, and lottery tickets...to the point of their kids starving on the streets.
So, if the techies think that handing WADS OF CASH to these people is best, I suggest they try doing so and seeing what happens...as I guess they are simply UNABLE to understand it any other way.
That is communism and we all know how successful that was in the USSRussia.
Oh God.
I was depressed enough already.
I better get off the internet.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesses from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."
California Billion-nerds, please send those checks to:
The KG9 Kid
PO Box 123
Incline Village, NV
This whole idea of a “basic income” for everyone is completely insane. Wouldn’t it be better to just give each person in the U.S. a trillion dollar coin instead of a “basic income” coin? After all, the cost to make a “basic income” coin is the same as the cost to make a trillion dollar coin, and everyone would be RICH and not have to exist at just a subsistence level with the trillion dollar coin. Everyone could buy anything they wanted and no one would ever have to work again.
The coins could be made from a base metal, so they would be cheap to make, and a few extra ones could be minted for the government itself, so taxes could be completely eliminated and yet government could still function. It’s such an elegant solution I don’t know why it hasn’t been implemented yet.
For myself, I’m going to start by buying a pony and the Broncos NFL football team. And I won’t even need pony food stamps to feed my pony because I’ll be so rich I’ll be able to afford all of the Purina Pony Chow my pony could ever want.
Like everything else, it’s a good idea if done right, a bad idea if done wrong.
And like everything else, it will be done wrong, because the collectivist government will do it wrong on purpose, in order to increase the public acceptance of the increase of collective dependency.