# Universal Basic Income



## fruit is bad for you (Aug 22, 2016)

Thoughts?

Essential to reduce poverty and avoid mass unemployment with the automation of further jobs, or an example of big state, well huge state really.

Would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the whole concept, is there room for fully automated luxury communism alongside anarchism?


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## Brother X (Aug 22, 2016)

Personally, I'm conflicted regarding this concept. 

1.) Of course I'd like there to be a saftey net available to those who need or choose to use it.
2.) I fear the "Big Brother Protector/State effect this could engender over time. That of course is the cynical part of my nature, regarding large bueracracies, but I don't think I've seen any evidence in this lifetime to feel otherwise. Give the state a thin edge and a wedge and they will abuse it every time. Of course, that begs the question: "Who is the state?" Ultimately it is US, as in humans. "We" fuck ourselves, over and over in a unending cycle of self fuckery. So, with that in mind, I wouldn't mind seeing what a civilizatiion looks like where there is a genuine lesuire class. I'd like to see what those folks get up to once they've had sufficient time to deprogram from the planetary work machine. I mean, what the hell, it couldn't be any worse than what we have, right?​


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## QueerCoyote (Aug 22, 2016)

If we're leaving feasibility out of the equation, I would much rather do away with money altogether and run on a barter system. 

But we're not, so my curiosity would be how that would translate in areas with a lower cost of living. Is universal basic income going to account for the different costs of living by region/country? And if so is that going to be used to economically disadvantage those who live there? Or if it's too high, small businesses will be pushed out for larger corporations because they won't be able to pay employees. I would much rather see a revolution of people deciding where their money goes, and based off of that what small businesses can afford to pay their employees, while laws regarding base income apply to larger corporations that are above a certain capital net income. Otherwise we're inviting the government to manage us in one more way. 

Instead of "pay us this amount all the time everywhere" and giving the state the ability to determine how much all businesses should be paying, it might be more effective to say "If a business is making x amount of net income, __% should be redirected to employees." That way if a business is small or failing, they won't go under simply for high employee wages that may not accurately correspond to the work/location, but businesses making above a certain amount of net money would have to send it back towards the workers.


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## fruit is bad for you (Aug 22, 2016)

When I'm talking about universal basic income I'm talking about replacement of all welfare/benefit programs and replacing with a single non means tested payment to all citizens, I think you might be talking about a raised living/minimum wage? But points about cost of living in different areas would still apply and are good questions to raise.


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## QueerCoyote (Aug 22, 2016)

fruitisbad said:


> When I'm talking about universal basic income I'm talking about replacement of all welfare/benefit programs and replacing with a single non means tested payment to all citizens, I think you might be talking about a raised living/minimum wage? But points about cost of living in different areas would still apply and are good questions to raise.



Aha, sorry, yep! My brain started going before it had processed enough of your post.


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