Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income?
by dllthomas on Saturday January 23, 2016 @07:44PM
(#10960893)
"BI can't be static, and will have to be tied to the affordability of basic necessities like housing and transportation. As prices rise, so must BI, or it's not BI."
I could not disagree more.
(Or if you want to nitpick definitions and insist that you've defined BI the one true way, then we can be pedantic and say I strongly oppose BI and strongly support a system that is very nearly BI but for this difference...)
I believe that a basic income at an appropriate level will, over time, increase productivity. But I also believe that the result of a basic income higher than the economy can support is a high level of inflation. If we don't raise BI in response, that's naturally self-correcting. I don't want to remove that safeguard.
Increasing it at (or slightly faster than) targeted inflation sounds advisable. We should not increase it based on predicted or observed inflation.
I could not disagree more.
(Or if you want to nitpick definitions and insist that you've defined BI the one true way, then we can be pedantic and say I strongly oppose BI and strongly support a system that is very nearly BI but for this difference...)
I believe that a basic income at an appropriate level will, over time, increase productivity. But I also believe that the result of a basic income higher than the economy can support is a high level of inflation. If we don't raise BI in response, that's naturally self-correcting. I don't want to remove that safeguard.
Increasing it at (or slightly faster than) targeted inflation sounds advisable. We should not increase it based on predicted or observed inflation.