“If you are not weak, frail, defenseless, or otherwise handicapped, you should be working to contribute to that society.”
How about full-time moms who stay home and raise the children? Should the government force them to enter the work force and “contribute”. Maybe it is not really the job of government to determine how much or little a person should work and “contribute”. Maybe the government is ill equipped to monitor such things.
Obviously we need fiscal policies that benefit us as a society. We should not be providing an incentive for laziness or anti-social behavior such as addictions to drugs, alcohol, and perverted lifestyles.
“At the instance, a guaranteed annual income is Socialism and at the extreme, Communism. Both have been tried and neither has survived in the long run.”
As I pointed out in my other response, a basic income is not necessarily socialistic or communistic. Kuwait has done it for many years fairly successfully. There certainly are consequences. And since their economy is entirely based on oil, they are fairly vulnerable to the impact of oil prices.
I suggest that the primary source of revenue to support a basic income could be derived from intellectual property rights. Such rights are not intrinsic or rights based on natural law. They essentially are derived by the government appropriating and restricting the natural rights of free citizens. Therefore it is wholly moral and just to compensate free citizens for the protections afforded by our government which is of the people and by the people.
I think every Mom should stay at home and take care of the kids, at least until they get into school. But I have also seen how women get pregnant with no father in the home just so they can get various income subsidies. To me, that's playing the system, and there are a lot of people playing the system. I think you'd agree with most of Beard's book, and you might give it a read.
We should not be providing an incentive for laziness or anti-social behavior such as addictions to drugs, alcohol, and perverted lifestyles.
Agree 100 percent, but we already have people who play the system. What I object to are the able-bodied who are capable of work, but don't. I think a guaranteed income would simply compound the problem. There's just too much evidence to show that would be the case.