5 reasons to consider a no-strings-attached, basic income for all Americans

Salon ^ | March 19, 2014 | Lynn Stuart Parramore

[Cincinatus' Wife]

What if you could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? Didn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. Nobody would ask about your job status or how many kids you have. The check would arrive in the mailbox, no matter what.

Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. All over the world, people are talking guaranteeing basic incomes for citizens as a viable policy.

Half of all Canadians want it. The Swiss have had a referendum on it. The American media is all over it: The New York Times’ Annie Lowrey considered basic income as an answer to an economy that leaves too many people behind, while Matt Bruenig and Elizabeth Stoker of theAtlantic wrote about it as a way to reduce poverty.

The idea is not new: In his final book, Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that guaranteeing people money without requiring them to do anything in exchange was a good way for Americans to share in prosperity. In the 1960s and early 1970s, many in the U.S. gave the idea serious consideration. Even Richard Nixon supported a version of it. But by 1980, the political tide shifted to the right and politicians moved their talking points to unfettered markets and individual gain from sharing the wealth and evening the playing field.

Advocates say it’s an idea whose time has finally come. In a world of chronic job insecurity, stagnant wages, boom-and-bust cycles that wipe out ordinary people through no fault of their own, and shredded social safety nets, proponents warn that we have to come up with a way to make sure people can survive regardless of work status or economic conditions. Here are five reasons they give as to why a guaranteed basic income might just be the answer.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This will make your hair curl.

[C210N]

We already have this. It is a combination of Earned Income Credit and about 140 welfare programs. Working the “system” one can take in $52,000 here in MA. Your state may vary.

[Bullish]

We may just as well all become drug addicts with govt as our pusher.

This idea, of course is ridiculous.

[Mrs. P]

Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted curly hair. Never dreamed it would be this awful.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

That’s hilarious. Thank you for such a good laugh (in the face of disaster). : ) : (

[exDemMom]

Just... wow. Are people really that stupid?

First of all, money has no intrinsic value. Its worth is derived as a consequence of the fact that we use it to barter indirectly for goods and services, because indirect barter is a lot more efficient than direct barter.

Money handed to people with no strings attached is worth exactly as much as the effort they put into earning that money. In other words, it’s worthless.

[Gaffer]

“Share in Prosperity”.........just another name for thievery

[raybbr]

It's a family thing:

80-Year-Old North Carolina Educator: Why I Got Arrested Protesting Right-Wing Agenda for Schools

Barbara Parramore with her daughter, AlterNet Senior Editor Lynn Stuart Parramore.

[Hugin]

Money handed to people with no strings attached is worth exactly as much as the effort they put into earning that money. In other words, it’s worthless.

Strange logic. Actually, it spends exactly the same as any other money, whether it's individual or corporate welfare.

[Samurai_Jack]

Hugin, I would disagree with you here. For about one year it will send like any other money. And then inflation will take care of it. To put it simply, the price of milk and everything else will adjust to 10.00 to compensate for the new cost of living.

It’s a very simple concept. Nothing is Without Cost. Somebody pays for Everything.

[stormhill]

The author is clearly hostile to capitalism:
What’s clear is that our current capitalist system and social safety net have failed too many of us. It may be that in order to confront that epic fail, policy makers will need to get bolder in considering universal guarantees to all citizens.

Milton Friedman demonstrated that capitalism is the best vehicle to lift people out of poverty but Progressives will never stop chewing on the socialism bone.

Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. All over the world, people are talking guaranteeing basic incomes for citizens as a viable policy.

And if all over the world people are talking about jumping off a bridge...?

[exDemMom]

Strange logic. Actually, it spends exactly the same as any other money, whether it's individual or corporate welfare.

No, the logic is not strange.

Money handed to people in exchange for nothing is worth exactly that. Of course they can spend it, because other people have produced goods and services, which imparts some of the value of those goods and services to the money. In turn, the value of the money is diluted by the amount of money handed out in exchange for nothing.

Maybe it would be easier to understand if I push the description to the limit. Imagine if all people were receiving a guaranteed minimum income, and no one were working. In the absence of goods and services, how much would that money be worth? Could any quantity of money, no matter how large, substitute for the absence of goods and services?

[Hugin]

Sure, but milk would still be ten dollars for everyone, regardless of where your money came from.

[exDemMom]

No, the price of the milk would inflate to adjust for the fact that more money is available to buy it, but the quantity of milk did not increase.

[stormhill]

Nailed it.

Not only will the payout be continually increased in a futile attempt to keep up with inflation but taxes will begin to approach and, at the margins, exceed 100%.
At that point, most of us will only go to work at the point of a gun.

[exDemMom]

Indeed.

I think that people who believe these schemes can work do not have an understanding of basic physics and are mathematically illiterate.

[plangent]

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Everybody got what they wanted from the labor of others.

They nearly starved to death because no one wanted to do the hard work of turning the land, planting the see and harvesting the crops.

Three years later this utopia was ditched, every family was assigned a parcel of land and told to provide for your self.

Wasn’t it George Santayana who said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373725/technology-and-wisdom-victor-davis-hanson

“Americans now have more computer power in their smart phones than did the Pentagon in all its computer banks just 30 years ago. We board a sophisticated jet and assume that the flight is no more dangerous than crossing the street.

The downside of this complete reliance on computer gadgetry is a fundamental ignorance of what technology is. Smart machines are simply the pumps that deliver the water of knowledge — not knowledge itself.

What does it matter that millions of American students can communicate across thousands of miles instantly with their iPads and iPhones if a poorly educated generation increasingly has little to say?

The latest fad of near-insolvent universities is to offer free iPads to students so that they can access information more easily. But what if most undergraduates still have not been taught to read well or think inductively, or to have some notion of history? Speeding up their ignorance is not the same as imparting wisdom. Requiring a freshman Latin course would be a far cheaper and wiser investment in mastering language, composition, and inductive reasoning than handing out free electronics................”

[muir_redwoods]

So everybody, the wino with the cardboard sign asking for donation up to Bill Gates gets a check for thirty grand a year regardless of any othe source of income. Who’s paying it? Where’s it coming from? Are these people so delusional as to believe we can just print it? If the government can do that, stop collecting taxes and just print what you need.

[Hugin]

I notice the author claims Milton Friedman supported this idea. I doubt it, but I could see how he might say that it would be better than what you point out we have now.

First, it wouldn’t punish people for working, at least not directly. And since there would be (supposedly) no strings attached, you wouldn’t need the millions of federal, state and local administrators to run it. It’s possible it could save enough on administration to make up for paying all those extra checks, while encouraging poor people to work and save.

But of course, “no strings attached” would never happen. The nature of government is to attach strings to everything we do. The morality police on the left and right would demand that the money be tracked and not allowed to be used on whatever vices they deemed unacceptable. And the left and some on the right would complain about “the rich” getting subisdies, and those who worked hard to get ahead would find their “mincome” taxed or otherwise reduced, and once again government would be in the business of punishing success and subsidizing failure.