Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income?

Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by JonFish85 on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:41PM (#10959403)

There's no way you'd be able to get rid of them all. What happens when people spend their entire income on lottery tickets? You can't let them starve, you'd need a way to divorce money from services in that case, which is part of what the US welfare system tries to do in part.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by rbritton on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:46PM (#10959432)

At the risk of downvotes, why can't you? At some level, personal responsibility must come into play. There's a limit on how much you can protect people from themselves, though where that limit is can be a very political topic.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by JonFish85 on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:48PM (#10959447)

People aren't responsible though, especially not people who are needing social services like welfare. People think short term, and some need to be protected from themselves.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by aninhumer on Saturday January 23, 2016 @02:30PM (#10959664)

Poor people don't always make the best financial decisions, but I think the number of people who would waste all their money without buying any food is relatively small.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by varelse on Saturday January 23, 2016 @02:17PM (#10959591)

Because then the right lobbyists contact either FoxNews or MSNBC (depending on who's apparently to blame) and ignite a two-minute hate about how horrible this is by trotting out a few tragedies and the sheeple get their outrage on, no?

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by seba_dos1 on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:48PM (#10959443)

Sure, there's also stuff regarding disabilities, health and probably way more that simply didn't slip into my mind right now. That's why I phrased it as I did.

However, I suppose the existence of basic income could also change the character of those remaining social programs. If someone spends their entire income on lottery tickers, they probably need different kind of help than more money from welfare.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by afarrell on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:48PM (#10959448)

What happens when someone sells their EBT for money and spends that money on $addictive_substance? Fundamentally, forcing adults to not die requires quite a bit of coercion.

There will still be soup kitchens, which will have low demand anyway. If we really want to, we could just send those folks to CCC-style work camps I guess?

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by cavisne on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:49PM (#10959457)

Exactly. Once the government takes responsibility for something society will never let them take it away. Basic income with no other welfare might be plausible, Basic income on top of all the existing welfare is a socialist dream

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by AnthonyMouse on Saturday January 23, 2016 @01:49PM (#10959455)

Nobody who has money in hand and is starving is going to buy lottery tickets instead of food.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by icebraining on Saturday January 23, 2016 @02:41PM (#10959710)

Exactly. If you're worried, just give in small amounts, so that one can never blow the month's income when they're well-fed.

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Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income? by cavisne on Saturday January 23, 2016 @06:51PM (#10960709)

They are very likely to buy drugs though

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