Basic income for all?

[BrilloPad]

Switzerland basic income: Landmark vote looms - BBC News

Interestingly the idea appeals to left wingers and right wingers. Left wingers as they don't want wage slaves. Right wingers as they don't like the cost of determining benefits.

[DimPrawn]

Don't like it.

If you are retirement age - state pension
If you are disabled - disability pay
If you are working - tax breaks and PAYE
if you are running a business - tax breaks and dividends
If you are a lazy fecker of working age - feck all! - get a fooking job!

[BrilloPad]

If you are a lazy fecker of working age - feck all! - get a fooking job!

The point of the article is that robots are coming to take all the menial jobs.

The only people left working will be coders. They are the future.

And the government, since 1997, has decided that coders are unimportant. No, actually worse than that. They are the enemy.

[NickFitz]

The Mincome experiment in Canada in the 1970s seems to suggest it could be a good idea:

University of Manitoba economist Evelyn Forget conducted an analysis of the Dauphin portion of the experiment in 2009 which was published in 2011. She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from accidents and injuries. Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.

[TestMangler]

Don't like it.

If you are retirement age - state pension
If you are disabled - disability pay
If you are working - tax breaks and PAYE
if you are running a business - tax breaks and dividends
If you are a lazy fecker of working age - feck all! - get a fooking job!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQHKZFzr_jY

[DimPrawn]

The Mincome experiment in Canada in the 1970s seems to suggest it could be a good idea:

University of Manitoba economist Evelyn Forget conducted an analysis of the Dauphin portion of the experiment in 2009 which was published in 2011. She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from accidents and injuries. Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.

More young people living off the state, doing feck all, taking selfies, doing FaceBook whatever that is....

Get a job or starve on the street. Simples!

[VectraMan]

The point of the article is that robots are coming to take all the menial jobs.

Does that mean the robots will have to pay tax to pay for the handouts for everybody else?

I like it in terms of getting rid of the huge bureaucracy there is around benefits, and also putting an end to the benefits trap. Right now we encourage people not to work by taking away their benefits if they do. If they get the benefit anyway and can keep whatever amount they earn on top then that's a big incentive to work, not the opposite. It also means there's less reason to have a minimum wage, which then means low skilled workers can undercut the job-stealing robots. Of course then we'd have to work out what to do with all the unemployed robots.

[DimPrawn]

Of course then we'd have to work out what to do with all the unemployed robots.

[NickFitz]

More young people living off the state, doing feck all, taking selfies, doing FaceBook whatever that is....

Which is, of course, precisely what the experiment demonstrated did not happen. But why let reality get in the way of a fondly-held prejudice based on no facts whatsoever, eh?

[Mordac]

The only people left claiming benefits will be coders. They are the past.

FTFY