pouët.net

I sometimes wonder if this wish for "unconditional income" is based on some weird form of narcissism: "Give me money without condition from others who worked for it, because I am worth this privilege and no one has the right to force me to do anything for the money I want."

Reminds me of the mind set little children have towards their parents regarding their pocket money. And narcissism has its root in the childhood, since little children (especially babies) only know their own needs and expect them to be fullfilled by their parents unconditionally (which is healthy in the early childhood, but not when getting older).

Unconditional basic income with extra income if you use your time wisely!

Time is more valuable than money.

It's got less to do with narcissism and more to do with minimizing bureaucracy and maximizing equality while also guaranteeing that it's always beneficial to take up employment of any kind. At least here in Finland it's also got quite some support with right wing politicians for this exact reason and by tweaking the parameters in the economical model it's quite possible to end up with solutions that are quite distant from the communist paradise.

Personally I find the idea beautiful in the same mathematical sense that libertarianism and communism are beautiful, but it would probably fail horribly in real life and people would still fall through the cracks just like they do now.

Just shows that Adok never had to work a shitty job to get food into the fridge, or would you sort trash for free - as it's fun?

I prefer unconditional access to participation in society over unconditional money transfers.

I think what MensaBoy is talking about is something akin to COLA or Cost of Living Allowance, which is something generally paid to military personnel or people working overseas rather than a welfare payment.
I think it shows that he still/has lived at home with his parents for a long time - the idea of welfare for nothing (in difference to either charity or a genuine job-seekers allowance) stems from what I consider to be a very entitled mindset.
I'll use myself to explain. Despite the value of our assets and the fact that we have little or no debt my wife and I due to our income are eligible for either Newstart Allowance or Austudy. Yet neither of us do. The simple reason is that we don't need to - essentially the bureaucracy and redtape involved is more effort than the income itself is worth. On top of that both my wife and I have a fairly strong work ethic - neither of us has not been actively working or involved in a business venture (including whilst studying) since we were both of an age to be eligible to work.
I guess the short ver. is similar to what mog said - it's kinda easy to talk about things like a COLA when you're sat on mum and dads couch. Not so easy when the rent on your fleapit is ovedue and the only food in the fridge (damn those infernal electricity bills!) is stale corn flakes and cold water.

This. Because it is like this.

mog, ringofyre, it is simply that I fail to see real opportunities to earn money for many people. The economy needs less and less workforce, since many of the things which workers used to do are nowadays automatized. Who is needed is really great people - such as excellent programmers and such stuff (although I even fail to see how you can make money in the IT industry, IMHO the market is already saturated). For many people there is no perspective any more. Why drive them into poverty? After all, they are also human beings. The value of a human being is independent of his/her usefulness for economic purposes.

Ha! Perhaps future historians will say that the men of our time, unable to comprehend that they were attending to the liberation of mankind through robotic productive forces, complained of rise of unemployment and a tremendous global economic crisis that seemed endless.

:]

Shirley the irony here is that a bunch of mostly white, European, middle-class, white collar men mostly all gainfully (self?) employed are discussing a unified welfare system/payment for those people who fall below the poverty line.

I listened to a couple of old songs I like to give me some perspective here.

Gary Clail and the On-U Sound System - Food, Clothes and Shelter.

Disposable Hero of Hiphoprasy - Television, Drug of a Nation.

What I got out of a relisten was this -

Most 1st world countries (America, Europe, the UK, Australia etc.) already have some form of public housing, "free" health care and subsidised utilities. And for most - education is also free.
There are often huge waiting lists for all of those services but as our population rises to the level that our planet cannot sustain that is surely going to be an inevitability. Also many discrepancies will arise wherever you go but essentially it all boils down to a few points.

- There's a queue. There always will be.
- Those who have the least access or availability to benefits are often those who need it the most, how many homeless people have internet connectivity for example.
- For anyone who's given money to a beggar or homeless person - how much do you imagine is used to buy food or pay for shelter rather than on drugs or alcohol?

The solutions? in my view?
Govt.s should spend on health/education infrastructure and education. To begin with.
Infrastructure means more people learning rather than living off the dole. Spending on education means you may end up with a brain drain but it (hopefully) means you end up with a professional workforce that is not only backed up by their top class education (either free or subsidised by the govt.) but also ready to step into a workplace that's equipped and capable of providing them with the means to make a difference.

End of the day - providing welfare payments to those who are unwilling to shoulder the burden of a modern day workload - international search and rescue efforts or scrubbing clean places like Fukushima are going to be a godsend if I ever become King for a day!

Did a robot serve you your Mcdonalds today?

Cause they've been at the fore front of bringing forward humanities need to provide for the downtrodden.

the linkys for the music I presented earlier -

Gary Clail and the On-U Sound System - Food, Clothes and Shelter.

Disposable Hero of Hiphoprasy - Television, Drug of a Nation.

I've read a lot of stupid stuff around here but this is really ... extra stupid. I'm actually not sure if you are escapist or if you were missing something. Your programming skills are useless no matter how advanced they are if there are no working class heroes.


+1 for mog

This is not irony. The ones who are really in bad shape, the ones who really have to struggle to survive (or even are doomed to die) usually do not have the opportunity to discuss these things, and neither the power to implement changes. Therefore the ones among the well-off ones among us who are actually not egoistic enough to care only about themselves have to step us and see to it that life conditions for the masses are improved.

I actually agree with Adok here, quite whole-heartedly, even. I’m not sure how this makes me feel.

I have been working full-time for about half a year so far. In this time I have realized that life is different from what I believed it to be. Your employers really care only about how much profit you can help them gain. In order to pursue your own interests, you either have to be very rich or you need to have somebody who is willing to pay you for doing what you are interested in, which very rarely happens. It is often not even possible to pursue your own interests in your spare time since you need that time to regain strengths and to continue acquiring skills needed in your career.

This has made me realize that all I have achieved I owe to my parents. If they had not been this successful in their own lives, I would not have had a computer, I would not have had time to learn programming and to expand my writing skills, I would not have been able to make Hugi and so on. In the course of the years I became increasingly naive and thought that my situation was normal, but now I have realized it isn't. There are certainly many people who could have achieved the same things I achieved but simply didn't have the possibilities to develop the required skills and so on. Real life is not like that you can easily live up to your own desires, this is a privilege for few. With a basic income, however, many more people could live up to their potential, I think.

basic income would be a given if we recognized the natural resources and land of the planet as not really belonging to anyone, and taxing the use of those resources accordingly. right now most profitable property belongs to a small group of individuals because of arbitrary contracts formed by different people starting with the ones loads of generations back who claimed it in the first place; most likely not under democratic circumstances.

a lot of the comments here seem based on the idea that the greatest wealth available is what workers are paid by their employers, and that that's what we're going to have to tap into to offer everyone a life of dignity. a lot of brainwashing made you arrive at that conclusion

@Adok i'm not sure about that "there's no jobs anymore". a fact is: some countries have pretty high unemployment rates. i'd have to study them all to have a conclusion why. but there's always, "do it for bullshit" waste of time jobs. for that IT sector there's always minimum money chance. human adbotting. penny shit. or call centering. but it's those bullshit jobs. you gotta be like that. if you're not, you're not. but this is what die hard business society is. i don't like it either. i'd rather see it go down. that'd enjoy me. but...

I used to have these thoughts in my first job, 9-5 and then not much time left at home for myself and my hobbies, not much time to expand to new things. But I don't think about it now too much, I still go to job 9-5 and sometimes as a programmer it's obvious you don't typically code all 7 or 8 hours straight. But I like the job enough and I needed it, it's a bliss now to have my evening or my weekends home alone, totally free, nobody bothering me (like my parents). Maybe I also feel that in the work hours I contribute something to this world. I remember when I was unemployed, living with my parents, and also the days passed and I still didn't used the free time for demomaking or outside activities or anything.

And then I meet many of my old friends saying they can't stand 9-5, they are going to quit their job and make something at home. It's quite common mentality. Who knows, maybe you could quit your job and go make the new Flappy Bird and live from home :)

i think unconditional income should be limited to assembly.

"What is your opinion on this? IMHO it would be a great thing: people could do all the day what they really like to do (e.g., code demos) and nobody would have to worry about money required for staying alive."

yeah that means someone else is taking care of your own slacking off and lack of commercially viable activities

go fuck yourself with those ideas.

Well put, +1

A basic income as I understand it should be the bare minimum needed to live. No vacations, no shiny computers, no trips to Revision. In some form or other, most civilized countries already prevent their citizens from literally starving, this would just be a more efficient, humane way of going about it. The main difference is one of mindset: Choosing to give every human being basic dignity, which should include the right to eat and live, no questions asked.

Under the current system people are very strongly incentivized to work. Under basic income, this would still be the case, because an income increase from (say) the basic 2000 to 4000 would increase their disposable income about tenfold (even if 30% or so of the additional income was immediately taxed away). So a small fraction of people would just leech off society (as they already do), but most people would still work the same amount as now, and in exchange for a small increase in taxes, they would get an awesome safety net: the complete removal of all kinds of existential fear (and the stress that goes along with it), the freedom to quit a job they hate even if the next one isn't lined up yet, start a business, get a higher education just by wanting it badly enough.

Basic Income is not that different from forcing people to buy health insurance, and I don't see many people complaining about that.

I am always amazed by the ferocity of people opposed to the very idea of a basic income. It’s like they are personally attacked by the notion of somebody else having enough money to live without having to work for it. I wonder what’s up with that?

Depends, who provides that money?