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A comment on Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system. Parent comment

Re:Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system by evanpw on Thursday August 20, 2015 @08:31AM (#10091391)
$45k is way too high. A basic income is per person, not per household. Median personal income in the US is only about $24k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...). About 20% of adults with income currently make less than $12.5k. And if children also receive a basic income payment (which seems to be the case in the parent post's calculation), then no one will be starving at $12k/person.
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Re:Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system by xienze on Thursday August 20, 2015 @08:43AM (#10091446)
Right, but like I said, if this is to be implemented correctly your BI has to be high enough to replace existing welfare programs. One of the benefits is that you eliminate the overhead of maintaining said programs and just cut everyone a check.

You need to look at this in the "end game" scenario, which is, we need BI because there will be so much automation that hardly anyone needs to work anymore. You're not going to sell this to the poor by telling them that they're now unemployable and their BI is going to be less than their previous income + food stamps + housing subsidy + etc. So right off the bat, yeah, the BI floor needs to be the cash value of a person with full welfare benefits. And that's a lot more than $12K.

You're also discounting the inevitability that politicians will promise bumps to the BI for votes, people protesting that they can't afford to live in Manhattan on their BI, etc. It will quickly reach a point that even skilled workers will say "F this" and join the ranks of the unemployed.

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Re:Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system by jazzyk on Thursday August 20, 2015 @11:04AM (#10092297)
If per person, it would need to top out at some level.

Assuming your household consists of 5 kids, your spouse and you. 7 people x $12K/person = $84K. That would be 2x the average family income in the US today!

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